Rules of Accent Marks
When the normal rules of stress on syllables are broken, you need to add an accent mark to the new vowel to be stressed. My question is:
How do you know when the rules will be broken? Is there a grammatical rule for that? Or do you have to memorize all of the words that will break the rules 1 by 1?
Example: Camino, Caminó
Camino follows the normal rules of stress, which are: When a word ends in a vowel, N, or S, the stress falls to the penultimate(next to last) syllable.
Caminó, however, breaks that rule by adding an accent. I want to know if there is a rule that tells you when the normal rule will be broken and require an accent.
2 Answers
Camino follows the normal rules of stress, which are: When a word ends in a vowel, N, or S, the stress falls to the penultimate(next to last) syllable.
You missed the key part of the rule: If word has no written accent, and it ends in a vowel, N, or S, the stress falls to the penultimate syllable. "Camino", therefore, has the accent on the penultimate syllable, and it means "I walk" (present).
Caminó, however, breaks that rule by adding an accent.
It doesn't break anything. The stress is indicated by the accent: on the last syllable (on the O, to be precise), so the word means "He/she walked" (preterite). If there is an accent, you don't have to think, because the accent tells you where the stress is.
Going back to the previous rule, if you see a word like "comer", which has no accent, since it does not end in vowel, N or S, the accent must be on the last syllable ("mer").
How do you know when the rules will be broken? Is there a grammatical rule for that? Or do you have to memorize all of the words that will break the rules 1 by 1?
Spanish rules apply 100% and they can be written in just a few lines. When reading, if a word has an accent, you know how to stress the word. If it doesn't have an accent, then it can only be on the last or the penultimate syllables, depending on whether it ends in vowel, N or S.
When writing you need to know exactly how to split a word into syllables (there are also exceptionless rules for this) and it requires a bit more work, but it is essentially the same.
Memorize them. It's really not that hard. You have to memorize each word one by one as well so just memorize the words including the accent.
Plus, there are ways to remember if it needs accent marks. Try recalling how it sounded when someone used it when speaking to you, when you yourself were speaking and used it, or how it looked the last time you read it.
