TIMED PRACTICE · Español
Spanish typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Spanish typing speed
Spanish uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 4 characters beyond a-z — á, é, í, ñ.
If you already touch type English, most of Spanish transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 4 characters this bank reaches for beyond a-z — á, é, í and ñ — and they are not decoration: leave them off and the word is misspelled. A handful of words in this bank needs at least one.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 70 common Spanish words — 26 distinct characters in all, averaging 3.7 written units per word. Nothing about the test is fixed except the fairness of it: the same bank, sampled fresh, so a result today is comparable with a result next month. Duration, word count, punctuation and digits are all yours to set.
A frequency count of the bank explains why early progress feels fast and later progress does not. The top ten characters cover about 76% of everything these Spanish words contain; past that you are learning characters that turn up once in a paragraph, which takes as long to automate and pays back far less often.
The temptation in Spanish is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 70
- Distinct characters
- 26
- Average word
- 3.7 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Spanish practice words
- á1
- é1
- í1
- ñ1
Counted across the 70 practice words. 6% of them need at least one.
el la de que y a en un ser se no haberñ, and the punctuation that opens a sentence
The Spanish layout is QWERTY with ñ given its own key, to the right of L where a semicolon sits on a US keyboard. It is a full letter of the alphabet rather than a marked n, and it is not optional: año and ano are different words.
Spanish is also close to unique in opening questions and exclamations with inverted punctuation — ¿ and ¡ — which the Spanish layout provides directly. They exist because Spanish word order does not always signal a question early, so a reader benefits from being told at the start.
The accented vowels are typed with a dead key: press the acute accent, then the vowel. Latin American and Spanish layouts differ in a few positions, mostly around the symbols a programmer reaches for.
Questions about typing in Spanish
Why is my Spanish speed lower than my English speed?
Because you are doing two things at once: finding the key and recalling what it writes. Speed in a script you have typed for years is one motion; speed in a new one is a lookup followed by a motion. The lookup is what disappears with practice, and when it does the gap closes faster than most people expect.
Is the Spanish typing test the same every time?
No. Words are drawn at random from the Spanish bank on every run, so there is nothing to memorise and a second attempt is a fresh test rather than a rehearsal. You can fix the duration or the word count, turn punctuation and numbers on, or paste your own text.
What is the difference between raw and net WPM?
Raw counts everything you typed; net subtracts what you got wrong and left wrong. A large gap between the two is the most useful signal on the results screen — it means the speed is there and the accuracy is not, which is a different problem from simply being slow, and a faster one to fix.
Do I need a Spanish keyboard?
No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — á, é, í and ñ — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.
Which Spanish keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 4 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 70 practice words between them use 26 of those 30, so 4 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Spanish?
70 of the most common words in Spanish, drawn at random. They use 26 distinct characters between them and average 3.7 written units each, with the longest running to about 7. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Spanish hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 6% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 4 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Spanish: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Which finger types which keyThe standard finger assignment for every key on a QWERTY keyboard, why the index fingers carry two columns each, and the keys people get wrong.
- The top rowQ through P sit one row up from home, and every key there is a reach and a return. Which fingers do what, and why E and R feel different.
- How to type fasterSix changes that raise typing speed, in the order worth making them. Most people's fastest gain is not typing faster — it is stopping mistakes.