Having problems with pronunciation of multiple syllable words

Question

Are there any types of rules-I know about stress, but for me it's more a case of not knowing how to separate a word into syllables correctly, which in turn causes me to pronounce it incorrectly. If that makes sense.

Thanks

Answer 1

Not sure if I completely understood you, but these are the rules to pronunciation of words:

(1) If the word has an accent then the stress is on that syllable.

(2) If not and the word ends in a vowel, an -n or an -s then the stress is on the second-last syllable.

(3) In 99.9% of other cases the stress is on the last syllable.

Answer 2

Ok. So in Spanish, most words are separated by syllables composed of a vowel and a consonant (in most cases). Unlike English, where you almost always have to look up the words in the dictionary to know the correct word break, in Spanish is pretty straightforward.

Please take a look at this posting from our Grammar Section. It should give you an idea what syllable is stressed and how the word should broken down.

Thanks - bfpsu, Nov 15, 2012

Answer 3

For example I mean ga-to instead of gat-o al-can-zar’ instead of alcan-zar