Do accents make a difference in the pronunciation?
does the accent á é ù í or ó make any difference in the way we pronounce ??
7 Answers
Stress or emphasis is extremely important. The word can become unintelligible if stressed in the wrong place. Take our word "necklace". we put the stress on the first syllable, as in NECKlace. Now say the the word with stress on the second syllable, neckLACE. It sounds strange doesn´t it?
Welcome to the forum, Rania.
Stress is very important in Spanish because it often tells us who the subject it.
For example,
Hablo con Maria = I spoke to Maria
Habló con Maria = He spoke to Maria (It could also be usted/he spoke)
Another drastic example is,
Tengo 15 años = I am 15 years old.
Tengo 15 anos = I have 15 anuses.
To keep you from such silly mistakes as these, here's an article from the Reference section on accents/tildes.
It changes where you put the stress on the word, but not how you say the letter.
Consider: This is the present day. And: May I present to you, Mr Smith.
It changes where you put the stress on the word, but not how you say the letter.
I like this explanation of Dave's but I don't think his examples are easy to understand and they are in English anyway - sorry Dave!
You need to put the emphasis/stress on that accented letter, ok?
Hopefully together with all the other posts this will help you. 
You're right, sometimes accents do differiantes between two different word that are spelled the same
Ok, it seems much tricky for me :D i'm only a beginner ! So when we put the accent, it changes the meaning of the word ( because it changes where to put the stress) ? or it's just a matter of spelling, there are some words with the accent, meaning something, and others without accent, meaning something else ?
Once again, in the interest of not putting the orthographic cart before the phonetic horse, Spanish speakers do not pronounce a word in a certain way because of the way it's written; they write/spell a word in a certain way because that reflects the pronunciation. Most vocabulary we first learn from hearing and then we learn to write it. For Spanish speakers, the second step is relatively painless (because of the consistency of their orthography). For English speakers, the second step is more difficult (because, for historical reasons) there are many inconsistencies. For Chinese speakers, the two steps have almost no connection (because their writing system is fundamentally non-phonetic [parts of some characters do, indeed, relate to pronunciation but, on the whole, seeing a Chinese character may give no indication of how it is pronounced).
Unlike native speakers, most people who are studying Spanish as a second language, first encounter new words in their written form. For them, perhaps, one might say "*It's pronounced the way it's written." However, from the point of view of Spanish, as a language, the answer to "Why is it pronounced that way?" is "Because that's the way we pronounce it." On the other hand, the answer to "Why is it written that way?" (e.g. with a tilde) is "Because that shows how we pronounce it."
