Con acento o no? Criar

Question

I was reading a bit of Spanish and came across a sentence which started "Se crió ..." (He grew up ...). So I looked up the conjugation of criar on this site but found that the preterite was given as

crie, criaste, crio - no accents.

But according to Barron's 501 verbs it should be

crié, criaste, crió

Which should it be? I suspect it should have an accent as that is right for an -ar verb, but I find accents in the preterite tense the most difficult things to get right!

Answer 1

According to the R A E

Where is the stress on the word crio?. (the io forms a diphthong with the stress on the strong vowel ("o"), so why put an accent mark on it?

In your typical ar verbs hablar, sentar, amenazar, etc. you need an accent mark to stress the "o" of the 3 person, singular of the preterite. habló, sentó, amenazó. Not so in the case of crio.

• very nice catch, quentin, if you ask that any native, jeje, they will tell you otherwise, very annoying that you should know better, grrrrrrr Good job amigo:) - Heidita Feb 18, 2011

Answer 2

Without according to the R A E.

My dictionary has it with the accent though.

• My 501 Spanish Verb book ha it with accent too maybe the RAE has updated or changed its policy ??? - FELIZ77 Feb 18, 2011

Answer 3

Thanks a lot, Jespa, I have changed the category, this should be sent, if you can, please, to Paralee, she is the one in charge of the dictionary.

Thanks for finding this error, you are quite right, it M U S T have an accent

Edit: it does N O T have an accent...grrrrrr, Quentin knows everything::.sigh:::

• Ok, I'll send it to Paralee, but lorenzo9's comment about the RAE is interesting! - Jespa Feb 18, 2011
• Yep, I changed my answer after reading their conjugation chart. - lorenzo9 Feb 18, 2011
• I am leaving my post...but it is N O T correct, thanks jespa, good questioni:) - Heidita Feb 18, 2011

Answer 4

The accent is incorrect, however, look at this dictionary, this is a very extended mistake.

Very confusing...look at this one, geeeeeeez

Ohhh, there we are, this is one of the changes in the rules from 1999, yesssss, I knew it did have an accent, not any more though.

En esa Ortografía, la Academia sólo daba el criterio general y unos pocos ejemplos, pero en el DPD se ofrece una lista de los casos más importantes que admitían la tilde por razones prosódicas[2]: crie, crio, criais, crieis (de criar); fie, fio, fiais, fieis (de fiar); flui, fluis (de fluir); frio, friais (de freír); frui, fruis (de fruir); guie, guio, guiais, guieis (de guiar); hui, huis (de huir); lie, lio, liais, lieis (de liar); pie, pio, piais, pieis (de piar); rio, riais (de reír); los sustantivos guion, ion, muon, pion, prion, ruan y truhan; y, entre los nombres propios, Ruan y Sion.

• Well, in 1999 you were just becoming a teenager. How could you be expected to have noticed the change? - qfreed Feb 18, 2011
• That is why my book 501 Spanish Verbs (4th Edition) by Christopher Kendris has accents on many of the conjugations of criar, Heidi because it was published in 1996 c - FELIZ77 1 sec ago delete | fl - FELIZ77 Feb 18, 2011
• extensive - lorenzo9 Feb 19, 2011

Answer 5

But Qfreed, regular -ir verbs have the -ió ending don't they? Why is the argument different for them?

• Words of more than one syllable ending in a vowel are not accented on the last syllable without the tilde. Look at reír-rio or liar-lio for other examples.. - lorenzo9 Feb 18, 2011
• Ah, I see. And I found ciar, tiar, fiar and miar; all consistent with your comment! So criar doesn't have the accents! Many thanks. - Jespa Feb 18, 2011

Answer 6

According to the RAE, crie and crio must NOT have accent:

Pretérito perfecto simple o Pretérito

crie

criaste

crio

criamos

criasteis / criaron

criaron

Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

The reason is because crie, crio, are monosyllables. And monosyllables should never have accents.

http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=criar

• Luis, erase unaa vez---lee los demás posts, eso ha cambiado, no es correcto este post - Heidita Feb 18, 2011