Accented "E"

Question

I'm having difficulty knowing when to use the accented "E" and when to use the unaccented "E".

Answer 1

el with an accent means 'he' el without the accent means 'the'

OK! Thank you very much!!! - brian8, Apr 11, 2014

Answer 2

¡Hola!, Brian:

 

Accent Marks and Pronounciation Stress

Span¡shD!ct.com has two Reference articles dealing with the meaning and significance of the "Tilde" accent marks that are placed above some of the Spanish letter characters. Here are links to those two articles:

Tilde Accent Marks, and

Kinds (Categories) of Stress (or syllable emphasis)

Our teacher, Paralee Whitmire created these in the hope they would help you to understand how the tilde accent marks affect word pronounciation.

:) - ian-hill, Apr 11, 2014

Answer 3

Thank you both for your quick answers. I was doing some practice lessons at Duolingo. The exercise was to type what was spoken. The sentence was "El es un hombre". I typed the sentence starting with an unaccented uppercase "E" and it was tagged incorrect... it said I should watch my accents and showed an accented uppercase "E" at the beginning of the sentence. Later in the exercise, a similar sentence came up "El hombre come una manzana". I typed the sentence starting with an accented uppercase "E" and it tagged it as incorrect and said I should watch my accents and showed an unaccented uppercase "E" at the beginning of the sentence. I can't seem to get my head around when to accent and when not to accent. Thanks again! Brian

Sometimes the tilde only functions to distinguish two words spelled the same from one another: él or Él are lower case and capitalized versions of the English word "he". They are pronouns. "el or El" are the Spanish versions of the word "the" in English. - Esteban3304, Apr 12, 2014

Answer 4

Do you mean putting the accent mark on capital letters? I think there is no need to put accent mark on capital letters. That has been my understanding since I left High School.

Answer 5

Gracias

Answer 6

¡Hola!, Brian:

You must also keep in mind that "El" and on the other hand "Él" are different words.

 

When "el" is used as a definite article, as in "El hombre" or in English "the man" then the word "the" has no accent.

 

When "él" is used as a masculine personal pronoun, as in "Él es un hombre." or in English "He is a man." the word "he" is accented.

 

Having regard to whether or not capitalized first letters in a sentence need accents, here is an answer from 2010 on that subject:

I copied this from here ----> Rules for Spanish Accents

7.Although lazy typesetters and other lazy people would love to justify their lack of accents on capital letters, the Royal Academy has never published any rule against accenting capital letters and recommends that words in capital letters carry an accent like any other word

 .

The meaning is clear, Capitals get accented like lower case letters