Special characters
(á é í ó ú ü ñ ) What are these? When are they used? I get confused when using these letters instead of the regular letters.
2 Answers
In Spanish we have grammar rules that help us to always know the right pronunciation of a word. The "acento" (wich you wrote over á, é, í, ó, ú) just means that is the vowel over which the stress of the pronuntiation falls. It's equivalent to the symbol that is used in the english dictionaries to know the syllabe that is pronounced with strength. But the pronunciation is exactly the same (a, e, i, o, u).
"Ñ" is a unique spanish symbol for a very nasal "n". It's difficult for me to explain the sound; try to find some spanish dictionary with pronunciation on the web and look for some words, as "españa", "caña", "leña", etc. If you know some portuguese, it's a very similar pronunciation to "nh".
"Ü" is used to distinguish pronunciation between, for instance, "agueda" or "agüero". in the first word, the "u" is not pronounced, as "get" in english, but in the second one it is pronounced.
I hope this helped.
While jaenero pretty much covered it, I'd like to add a couple of things:
Accents are also used to distinguish certain words, for example: "de = of but dé = give" or "sé = I know and se = itself". Essentially, I dealt with accents by ignoring them by simply memorizing them. Every time you learn a new word, just remember if any of the letters are accented. Then, when you write it, remember to put those accents where they go.
A note about ñ. It's it's own letter. Spanish has 27 letters in its alphabet and ñ is one of them. It's pronounced as "ny" like the "n" in "onion". Think of how it sounds in "piñata".
Also, about ü. The U after G in spanish is silent. It's put in there because G is pronounced as a "huh" sound (the English H) if it's followed by an E. "Genial" sounds like "Heh - nee - all". So, to make G have the "Guh" sound, people put a "u" after it. So a word like "Guerra" is pronounced as "Gerra", even though there's a U.
But what if you wanted to make people pronounce the U and put it after a G? Well, you use ü. It's pronounced like a U, but (unlike regular U) it's never silent.
