Why in spanish do I put the marks over the letters

Question

Example:

                México           


                  The e is what I'm talking about. Why do I put the marks over the letters?

Answer 1

The standard rule for pronunciation in Spanish is that you stress the second to the last syllable in the word.

That sounds oversimplified. What Jason means is for this particular word, if there were no accent mark, Mexico, the normal stress would be placed on the 2nd to the last syllable according to the standard rules of intonation. The word would be grave class. You include an accent mark, México, to show that the stress is placed on the first syllable. Now you have made the word esdújula which requires an accent mark..

accents

Answer 2

Cheezy, the nice part about Spanish is that, unlike English, you always know how to pronounce any word correctly just by looking at it.

That is because Spanish follows standard pronunciation rules, which includes the correct syllable to stress. Whenever a word does not follow the rule, a tilde is always used to provide the proper pronunciation.

Example: pasa. The second to the last syllable is stressed, as usual for words ending in a vowel, n, or s.

Pásalo- when the pronoun suffix -lo is added to pasa, it requires the tilde to show that it's still the first syllable of the word that gets stressed.

These tildes, along with a few other symbols, are an essential part of Spanish spelling. The word is mispelled if the marks aren't included!

Answer 3

Qfreed is way smarter than me and is always saying things I don't understand. On this occasion, I had to look up "esdújula." In the process, I found a web page that discusses these marks in Spanish and thought it might be enlightening. At least it was for me.

Thanks to Qfreed for keeping me always learning.

The page is entitled "Los acentos ortográficos en español."

http://www.nacnet.org/assunta/acentos.htm

• Paralee did a lesson using words like esdújula etc. - ian-hill Sep 12, 2009

Answer 4

The tilde (the little mark) is to help with pronunciation. The standard rule for pronunciation in Spanish is that you stress the second to the last letter in the word. When you see a tilde, that's telling the reader to stress a different syllable instead.

• You mean that your normally stress the second to last SYLLABLE. - Goyo Sep 12, 2009

Answer 5

Excuse me, that mark is called an accent mark, not a tilde.

• In English, yes. In Spanish, no. - Goyo Sep 12, 2009
• In Spanish it is a tilde (refers to any pronunciation mark like the umlaut). In English it is an accent mark. - qfreed Sep 12, 2009

Answer 6

The mark is called and accent and it shows you were the strongest syllable is. The accent isn't just for the e's though, it is for I's and E's and U's also. What I mean is that in México, you would make the E a stronger syllable than all the other syllables in the word.

Answer 7

to show an acent

Answer 8

You'd also use an accent mark to distinguish between an "el," which is the masculine definite article, and "él," which with the accent mark is the pronoun "he" or "him." Examples: el maestro (the teacher); Me pregunto que será de él ( I wonder what will become of him.)

Answer 9

Qfreed, Ian Francis and ocbizlav all said:

esdújula

Before you little darlings start agreeing on a new pidgin language, please note that it's written "Esdrújula".