Differences with Soundings of the Same Accent Marks
You know how in "señora", there is a squiggly line above the n? And how in "Adiós", there is a mark above the o? There are many words with these marks or accent marks. But are there some words with the same type of accent marks with different sounding of that vowel? Like will all words with a mark above the ó sound exactly the same?
1 Answer
In Spanish, there is only one type of accent mark (the acute accent: á é í ó ú) and it does not change the pronunciation of the vowel itself, it just changes the emphasis or stress of the word to the vowel's syllable. For example:
"Camino": cah-MEE-noh (the path)
"Caminó": cah-mee-NOH (s/he walked)
The exception to this is if the accent is on the letter that would be stressed anyway by normal rules, the accent can serve to mark the difference between two otherwise identical words with different meanings (and the same pronunciation). For example:
"Cómo": COH-moh (how?)
"Como": COH-moh (like, such as)
and
"Dé": DAY (give)
"De": DAY (of, from)
