Type common Spanish words and see your speed and accuracy. Spanish shares the Latin alphabet with English but adds accents, ñ and inverted punctuation, which change where your fingers have to reach.
What makes Spanish typing different
Spanish is close enough to English that most typists carry their technique across intact, and far enough away that a handful of specific reaches cost real time. The differences are small in number and constant in frequency, which is the combination that matters: a reach you make once a paragraph is worth practising.
The main additions are the five accented vowels, ñ, ü in a few words, and the inverted punctuation that opens questions and exclamations. On a Spanish layout, ñ has its own key beside the l, and accents are produced with a dead key. On other layouts they require a modifier combination, which is considerably slower.
Spanish also has longer average words than English. Where English averages around five characters per word, Spanish runs closer to five and a half, so the same word count means more keystrokes and a slightly lower word-per-minute figure for identical effort.
Layouts and where the accents live
The Spanish layout (QWERTY with ñ) is what most typists in Spain and Latin America use. It places ñ to the right of l where an English keyboard has the semicolon, and puts the acute accent on a dead key beside it: press the dead key, then the vowel, and the accented character appears.
The Latin American layout differs slightly from the Spanish one, mainly in the placement of some symbols, but the ñ and accent handling are the same. On a US layout, the usual approach is the US-International keyboard, which turns the apostrophe into a dead key for accents and puts ñ on a modifier combination.
If you write Spanish regularly on a US layout, switching to US-International is usually the single largest speed improvement available. Typing á as a two-key dead-key sequence is much faster than any modifier combination, and it makes accents cheap enough that you stop skipping them.
- Spanish layout: ñ beside l, acute accent on a dead key
- Latin American layout: same accent handling, some symbols moved
- US-International: apostrophe becomes a dead key for accents
- Plain US layout: accents require modifier combinations and are slow
The reaches that cost Spanish typists most
Accented vowels are the obvious one, and the dead-key sequence is worth drilling until it is a single motion rather than two decisions. The words that carry accents in Spanish are extremely common — más, está, también, así, aquí — so this is not an edge case.
The ñ is easier than people expect once it has its own key, because it sits under the little finger in a position English typists already use for punctuation. The bigger cost is inverted punctuation: ¿ and ¡ open questions and exclamations, and typing them requires a reach most people have never automated.
Written accents also carry meaning, so skipping them is not a cosmetic shortcut. The difference between "el" and "él", or between past and present tense forms, lives entirely in the accent, which means accuracy here is semantic rather than merely tidy.
Comparing Spanish and English speeds
Expect your Spanish figure to come in slightly below your English one, typically by five to ten percent, even at identical skill. Longer average words mean more characters for the same content, and the accent sequences add keystrokes that English does not require.
That gap is a property of the language rather than a deficiency in your typing. As with every language on this site, the useful comparison is your own Spanish speed over time rather than a cross-language number.
Taking the test
Select Spanish from the language selector on any test and the word set switches to common Spanish vocabulary. All durations and measurements work identically: net WPM, accuracy, errors, consistency and percentile.
Whichever layout you use, type the accents as they appear rather than skipping them. A test taken without accents measures something easier than Spanish.