Accents in Spanish :(

lalsjfrhgoiubveowcbij

(edited 4 years ago)

Can someone please help me with this? I'm starting AS Spanish soon and where to place accents has always confused me. I feel like it's just been a guessing game the whole time and it's one of the things that often has lost me marks in essays and such because I'm just guessing and randomly placing them anywhere. I really want to sort this out now because I know my grammar and writing quality will have to be pristine if I hope to get an A*.

Please, does anyone know rules (if there are any???) for accents or do you just have to memorise all of them? :frown:

Gracias in advance

There are several uses of accents in Spanish, but their primary function is to indicate, either by their presence or absence, which syllable of a word is stressed, and by extension, how a word should be pronounced:

1 Stress:

As you've been studying Spanish for a while, you should have a good feel for where many words are naturally stressed. To determine whether an accent is required you need to know these 3 rules:

1) If a word is stressed on the last syllable, it only takes an accent if the word ends in a vowel, n or s. E.g. ojalá, estación, inglés, metal, hablar, pared. Note that the last three words are still stressed on the last syllable, but an accent is not needed because they don't end in a vowel, n or s. These are known as palabras agudas, literally "sharp words" because their sharpness/stress is at the end.

2) If a word is stressed on the penultimate syllable, an accent is only needed if the word doesn't end in a vowel, n or s. E.g. lápiz, árbol, mesa, mano, casa. These are known as palabras llanas, literally "flat words" and the vast majority of words in Spanish fall into this category.

3) If a word is stressed on the antepenultimate or more (e.g. ante antepenultimate) syllable then it always requires an accent. E.g. teléfono, quirófano, diciéndoselo. These are known as "palabras esdrújulas".

So with these rules you should now know where to place the accent on a word you're using in an essay. It should also help you in pronunciation so as to be able to stress the correct syllable of any new word you come across correctly.

2 Diacritical Accents:

Another use of accents in Spanish is to distinguish two words (usually monosyllabic) that are written and pronounced identically, but which have different meanings. These simply have to be memorised:

E.g.

tú = you
tu = your

él = he/him
el = the (definite article for a masculine noun)

mí = me
mi = my

té = tea
te = reflexive form of tú

aún = todavía
aun = incluso

dé = 3rd person subjunctive form of the verb "dar"
de = of/from

se = 3rd person reflexive
sé = imperative form of the verb "ser" and 1st person form of the verb "saber"

There aren't that many of these so they shouldn't be too difficult to memorise.

3 Hiatus Accents

This is the final class of accent in Spanish and their function is to separate two vowels that would otherwise be run together. E.g. the football player Raúl. The accent causes the a and the u to be pronounced separately and as the accent is on the u, the "ul" syllable is the stressed one. If the word were written as Raul, then it would rhyme with "towel".

Common examples include words like río, mío, tío, decía, comía, baúl, búho etc. etc.

Hope this has helped somewhat.

Accents in Spanish :(

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