Why the use of accent marks to seperate meaning?
The classic example is "año." When learning to write Spanish, accent marks are hard to remember sometimes. It could be that I'm just accustomed to English but could there be an easier way?
I know the marks are for pronunciation but come on, be creative and make a new word already. Am I just one crazy person, or is there others out there like me? (please let there be one!)
3 Answers
año has a consonant known as eñe (ñ). it´s not an accent but the way that letter is written. Its alphabetical independence is similar to the English W.
And it´s not just for pronunciation. Ano and año are very different words. for instance, saying Feliz Año Nuevo (happy new year) is so much different than using n for ñ. Also if you say Ella tuvo un gran año en Canadá.
Graphic symbols to denote stressed syllables are also very important in order to disambiguate several words.
English has some difficulties too. What about o´mine, or Guns´n ´ Roses?
I think Ñ was originally a double N and somehow got changed. Maybe one on top of the other. I could be wrong.
In English, we simply change the spelling, such as in "there, their and they're" or "two, too, to". In Spanish, the way you see it is the way you spell it, so you can't just change the spelling, you add an accent to distinguish words; such as: "si (if), sí (yes)". Also, as you said, the accents emphasize some syllables on the words to make them different. Don't worry, you'll get the accents soon enough.
