About Accent Marks

Question

There are many words with accent marks: 1. El niño. 2. ¿Cómo está? 3. ¡Buenos días! I could go on the whole week naming a hundred more.

Are there words where two letters in a row have an accent mark?

cañón - lizarey, Mar 16, 2013

Answer 1

Hi llamalovers000. The tilde above the n, ~, is not an accent mark. Ñ is its own letter, separate from n. You also might want to be careful with the word tilde. In English, it means ~. It does not mean accent mark, ´. However, in Spanish, this word can be used to also mean accent mark.

In Spanish, ´ is an accent mark. It means just that. Usually, it tells you which syllable gets the stress, or the accent when you’re pronouncing a word that does not follow the normal pronunciation patterns. This mark, ´, is not a diacritical mark. Like in French, mêlée, these marks are not accent marks. (You couldn’t have two in one word, right?) They’re diacritical marks. Which is to say, ê and é are letting you know how to pronounce the different vowels. Short e, long e, etc.

You cannot, to my knowledge, in Spanish, have one word with two accent marks.

Exception: sometimes there exists a letter u with two dots over it: ü. This can be called a diaeresis when and if it tells you that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable (i.e., to not be diphthongized with the adjacent vowel); or it can be called an umlaut in some Germanic languages (in which case, it’s telling you to pronounce a front vowel as rounded, rather than the usual unrounded way to pronounce front vowels).

The only example of this I can think of right now is: lingüística. Sometimes, you will see it with just ü in the word: bilingüe.

This is an excellent answer along with RGabia's supplement. - Jubilado, Mar 16, 2013

Thank you, Jubilado. - brian5764, Mar 16, 2013

Also the word pengüino, which means, as you may have guessed, penguin, and vergüenza, which means shame or embarrassment! There's others, too. - Rocoso, Mar 16, 2013

Good examples, Rocoso. Thank you. (I’m old. I forget stuff.) : ) - brian5764, Mar 16, 2013

Answer 2

Short answer: No, unless it is a borrowed word from French or some other language where such would be allowed.

You may see words that have both an "ñ" and an accented vowel, but keep in mind that "ñ" is not an "accented letter" but rather its own unique letter according to the Real Academia Española (RAE), which is the governing board of the (nominal) Spanish language.

As a fun note, if you want to ask someone in Spanish if a letter is accented you can say: "¿Lleva la (letter name) acento/tilde?". This litterally means: "Does the letter (letter name) carry an accent?"

Answer 3

Yes, they're made to difference a word from a preposition, it's called "Tilde diacrítica", they are:

Te----> Te quiero
Té----> Tea

Mi---->Mi cuaderno (My notebook) Mí--->Dámelo a mí (Give it to me)

El----> El gato (The cat) Él (He)

Si (If) Sí (Yes)

De--->El carro de María (Maria 's car) Dé--->Yo dé lo mejor de mí (I give the best of me)

Se--->Se fue (He/she is gone) Sé---> Lo sé (I know)

And there are some three letters word which is useful to difference:

Mas--->Fui, mas no había nadie (I went, but there was no one) (We prefer to used "pero" instead of "mas") Más--->El más elegante (The most elegant)

Aun--->Aun los ríos se congelaron (This is not commonly used, we prefer to use "todavía") Aún---> El verano fue aún más caliente (The summer was even hotter)

Que---> Tú sabes que te amo (You know that I love you) Qué---> What

And a couple more that have more than 3 letters: Quien--->Esa niña es quien juega con las muñecas (That girl is who plays with the dolls) Quién--->No sé quién juega con las muñecas (I don't know who plays with the dolls) Plus: You use "quién" when you don't know about what person you're talking about.

Cual--->Una casa en la cual vivamos juntos(A house where we can live together) (This is used when you're talking about something and you don't want to mention it again; for femenine: "la cual" and for masculine:"el cual, it would mean: where, who, which... Cuál--->¿Cuál casa deberíamos comprar?(Which house should we buy?) (And this is used when you're wondering about what to choose)

I guess that's what you're wondering )

I forgot: Tú--->you and tu--->your, I guess that's all. - RGabia, Mar 16, 2013

Excellent point about written accents used for homographs. - Jubilado, Mar 16, 2013

Thank you very much! Gracias! - llamalovers000, Mar 16, 2013

Answer 4

Sorry, too long for a comment.

Good point, RGabia! (This is why I used the word usually, by the way. Usually, the implication is that a word in question has more than one syllable.)

But there are one-syllable words that carry accent marks. Obviously, then, the marks aren’t telling you which syllable to stress, as there is only one. So their purpose here is to differentiate meaning: te has a different meaning than té, as you pointed out. El has a different meaning than él. Si has a different meaning than sí, etc.

Thank you.