why is the u in azucar hyphenated?

Question

why is the "u" in "azucar" hyphenated?

Answer 1

It is not hyphenated, it has an accent or tilde mark written over it. Such accent marks can do different things in different languages, but in Spanish, they indicate the syllable should be stressed.

Without the mark, azucar would be stressed like ah-su-CAR. With the mark, azúcar is stressed like ah-SU-car.

Answer 2

Ravenlilly:

"Azúcar" has an accent mark (called a 'tilde' for Spanish accents) over the letter "u" to indicate that the emphasis (or stress) when the word is pronounced falls on the u. In this way, the word is pronounced "a ZU car".

Usually, words that end in a consonant other than 'n' or 's' should be stressed on the last syllable. In this case, "azucar" without a tilde would be pronounced "az - u - CAR". Since this is not what is wanted, the placement of the tilde changes how the word is pronounced.

I hope this is a help to you.

Mejor recuerdos/Best regards,

Moe

Answer 3

It's not hyphenated, it's accented.

And the reason it's accented is that, under normal rules of Spanish pronunciation, the accent would be on the final syllable since the word ends in R.

But this word accents the syllable before that. And so, it requires the accent.