los tildes...anyone?

Question

ok, I've been studying spanish for a while now, and I still don't understand what dictates whether an accent mark appears or doesn't on a word. I believe it has something to do with specific syllables stressed on a word, but there is probably more to it than just that. Can anyone help me understand the basic rules of accent marks?

Thank you

Answer 1

There are five major rules:

Rule 1. All words ending in a vowel, a,e,i,o,u. and "n" or "s" are stressed on the next to last syllable.

sombrero libro, mochila and so forth.

Any exceptions to this rule get the accent mark.

águila, papá, acción ,nación, Sepúlveda

Rule 2. All words ending in a consonant except "n" or"s",are stressed on the last syllable.

Mujer ,pared, placer, reloj

Any exceptions get the accent mark útil, López lápiz and so forth.

Rule 3: All question words get the accent mark.

Qué, cómo dónde, cuándo, por qué and so forth.

Rule 4: To stress a weak vowel: biología, cafetería, grúa

notice the difference in pronunciation between the boy's name "Mario" and the girl's name "María" With María you hear the "eeee" sound pronounced longer.

Rule 5. To distinguish between similar words like te and té, de and dé, se and sé, These words all have different meaning and even in fast speech those with the accent marks actually are stressed more than those without the accents.

This is a very complicated theme that I have condensed way down I hope you can use it and appreciate it.

Great answer, Thanks Dani! - sanlee, Nov 30, 2014

A very complete answer, but you got one thing wrong: Rule 1 should include both vowels and the consonants N & S, which should then of course be excluded from rule 2. - Suzanne_Romijnders, Nov 30, 2014

Also, when an adjective that has an accent (rápido) becomes an adverb, it keeps its accent in the same place (rápidamente), even though 'mente' also has a stress on the first 'e', which doesn't get an accent. - Suzanne_Romijnders, Nov 30, 2014

I loved your Mario-María example :D I'd explain the rule a bit more though: 4: to stress the weak vowel (i/u) of what would otherwise be a diftong(combi of strong(o,a,e)and weak vowel to mark it as a separate syllable. - Suzanne_Romijnders, Nov 30, 2014

(because if it ís a diftong, you always place it on the strong vowel) and if you don't mention that I'm afraid people will get it wrong.. So that's why día has an accent: to make sure you pronounce it as DI-a, not djA. :) - Suzanne_Romijnders, Nov 30, 2014

Regarding N or S, I had that in mi fist attempt, then when I did an edit, I forgot to put them back. Regarding dipthongs, I didn't want to get into that. I wanted to keep things simple. And I need no help in pronouncing my native language. - Daniela2041, Nov 30, 2014

Answer 2

There are only two reasons to have an accent mark on a word: either the word deviates from the normal pronunciation (interpretación for example stresses the final "o", despite the fact that normally you would stress the "a" before the "c"; thus there is an accent mark letting you know to stress the last syllable even though the word ends with an "n"). The other case is when you have two words spelled exactly the same and one word is accented to distinguish it from the other (thus "como" means "[I] eat", while "cómo" means "like", "how" or "as").