Quick question..
Hello, I took Spanish for my first two years of college, but have forgotten much since then.. I am trying to get back into the swing of things and focussing more on the verbal than the written practice. Something that bugged me while taking courses, and I never bothered to ask or have forgotten, is tenses that spelled the same but with accent marks above them? Ex. is 1st person sing. hablo and 3rd person sing. past preterite habló
How would one go about differentiating these with no context?... or is with context the only way?
Thank you!
2 Answers
Ken has given you a good answer which I thought I would reinforce. In English, if you saw the sentence starting 'I read the book' you do not know if it is pronounced reed or red until you have seen the context eg I read the book yesterday = past/red I read the book every day = present/reed
Spanish is smart. They have clear rules on pronunciation and fewer sounds than English. A essential part of pronunciation is where to stress in a word. When the rules are not followed a tilde is added to show where to stress. This is a good infographic
Here is the article where the graphic came from. It is all in Spanish but her articles are always good.
Our teacher insisted we noticed the difference in saying HABlo I speak and habLÓ he spoke. Another one is habLÉ I spoke and HABle I speak subjunctive mood.
Ver Taal has lots of useful material including exercises and transcripts. There is a link on this site under resources.
I suggest you sign up for Veinte Mundos a free electronic magazine which includes grammar, audio and videos
and finally listen to lots of music - there are recommendations on previous threads
Buena suerte
The accent mark is the key. When reading, it is easy to see, as I think you already know...the ones with the accents on the last syllable in 1st and 3rd person are the past tense. And just like 1P present is hablo and 3P present is habló, the reverse is also true...1P preterite is hablé and 3P present is hable.
When listing or speaking, the key thing to know is that the accent is rarely just for differentiating how words are spelled or what they mean when reading. The accent mark indicates which syllable receives the greatest stress. So, for example 1st person singular present of hablar is pronounced A-blo, while the 3rd person preterite is pronounced a-BLO.
SO...at least for this problem...it has nothing to do with context...and everything to do with listening for the difference between which syllable is accented.
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BTW, if you're just getting back into things, you could do a lot worse that watch some simple youtube videos. Just search for beginner spanish or whatever term you want. A good place to start might be with Senor Jordan.
