¿Cómo puedo saber dónde va la tilde?

Question

English: John is writing it to them.

Spanish: John está escribiendoselo.

Because I chose the above form rather than ¨se lo está escribiendo¨ I know there is an accent but I cannot remember where it goes? Is there a rule that helps Spanish learners with this?

Any help with this form of the indirect objects are appreciated.

Por favor, corrija mi español, incluyendo el título. Muchas gracias!

Answer 1

Yeah, there is a rule for this and it is pretty simple. When you attach pronouns to gerundios, infinitives or positive command forms, the emphasis falls where the emphasis would fall if there were no pronoun(s) attached. In "escribiendo" the tonic accent falls on the second "e" (palabra llana), so the accent remains there giving you "escribiéndoselo". Learning the basic rules of phonetics will really help you with the rules of written accents, as well as improve your pronunciation.

¡Espero que te sirva!

Answer 2

Usually it's:

"ándo" and "iéndo" when the pronoun is attached. It's the second to last vowel excluding those from the pronouns.

Estoy escribiéndoles una carta a Ustedes.

Sigue diciéndole a mi mama que "No deberías manejar ese coche; se necesita rellenar el tanque."

John está escribiéndoselo.

Please correct me here if I'm wrong on anything

Answer 3

This is not really different from the above, but you can also look at it as keeping the accent where it would normally be (and marking that normally accented syllable as such)

Without those marks, the accents would have to shift to the last or next-to-last syllables according to normal spanish accenting rules, and they´d then sound horrible (and be wrong)