12/1/2025
These are the childhood sounds of the Spanish alphabet, recited phonetically just as I learned them in 1969 during my own childhood, which is where the title comes from. The pronunciation of each of the letters that are no longer in the alphabet (CH, LL, and RR) is in parentheses. I added an "h" to the end of a few letter names so English readers wouldn't confuse the vowel sounds, and I used "oo" for the letter U so it wouldn't be mistaken for "you." I kept "veh chica" for V, "doble oo" for W, and "i griega" for Y, because that's how they were taught in 1969. Nothing technical here—just the sounds as I remember them as a kid.*
* The letters CH and LL were officially removed from the Spanish alphabet in 2010 by the Royal Spanish Academy. The former letters joined "rr," "gu," and "qu" as digraphs. You may also notice differences from today's modern pronunciations of V, W, and Y; I've listed them the way they were commonly taught in 1969. After all, it's my Childhood Chant. ;-)
I've embedded the YouTube Spanish alphabet song that approximates how I learned it in 1969, except for the letter V: they say "uve" instead of "ve chica" as I learned it.
The poem is written in the style of sound poetry, a form that prioritizes rhythm and phonetic sound over literal meaning. PoetrySoup does not yet include "Sound Poetry" in its Types of Poems list, but it remains a recognized and accepted form.
Image concept by Poet using DALL-E (2025-11-30)
