Stress and Accents in Spanish Words

Make sure to complement this video with the note right below, learn to classify Spanish words!

Accentuation and Stress in Spanish words

So I got a few requests to provide some direction on how to determine where the accent or stress go in Spanish words.

What I have here is a list of 'general rules' to help with accents.

First some basic concepts:

1. Most Spanish words have an accent in one way or another. Even if a word does not have a marked accent (the accent mark is called 'TILDE') or a tilde there is still a syllable that will stand out the most.

2. The idea of sounding syllables stronger than others is referred as 'Acento prosodico' (compare to acento ortografico, item 6 below, which includes the tilde). Every Spanish words have an 'acento prosodico' and if you are a native speaker you can, from experience, know where the accent lies in a word without a tilde.

3. Syllables that are stressed are referred as 'TONICAS' and those that are unstressed are referred as 'ATONICAS'.

4. These words for the most part do not have an accent: Articles (La, Los, El and Las) prepositions (a, de, en, por), adverbs (tan and aun), pronouns (yo, tu, ellas, se, les), other words such as que, quien, como, cuando and verbs in its infinitive state.

5. Tildes are not added to consonants!

6. There are rules that specify where the accent lies, this accent is referred as 'acento ortografico'. I have listed some of these rules below.

Acentos

In Spanish, words are divided according to where the phonetic accent lies on, for instance, AGUDAS is a group of words in Spanish for which the stress lies in the last syllable of the word (right to left), in LLANAS (OR GRAVES) the accent lies on the penultimate syllable, ESDRUJULA on the syllable before the penultimate and so forth.

Phonetic accents guide words into one of these groups and from there we can determine if a tilde is needed according to some confusing rules.

Let's see if we can make sense of these rules!

AGUDAS:  These are words that carry the stress on the last syllable (right to left) and end in 's', 'n' or a vowel. Some examples include reloj, balcón, razón and vas (notice how even though the stress relies on the last syllable, still reloj and vas do not have a tilde)

Notes:

-The 'on' ending is common and it almost always carries a tilde

-Words with a single syllable do not carry a tilde (monosyllable)

-Words that end in a diphthong o in 'n' or 's' proceeded with a consonant (this applies mostly for foreign words that are used in Spanish, i.e. robots) do not have a tilde

Some examples:

tos

pan

ya

pie

altitud

afinidad

ballets

LLANAS: These are words that carry the stress on the second syllable (right to left) and have a tilde if they DO NOT end in 's', 'n' or a vowel.

Some words include:

Bolívar

cárcel  

imbécil

débil

cárde

hábil

As a result, if they end in 's', 'n' or a vowel there is no tilde (but the second to last syllable is still stressed!):

crema

examen

salas

casas

lana

ESDRúJULA: A word that has the accent on the third syllable (right to left); these words always carry a tilde.

Some words include:

esdrújula

América

análisis  

Bélgica

bioquímica

SOBREESDRúJULAS: A word that has the stress on the fourth syllable (right to left); these words always carry a tilde.

Some words include:

véndemelo

corrígemelo

recomiéndasela

SUMMARY:

As you can see, most if not the entire set of words in the Spanish language have a stress in them. Some have a TILDE and others do not. THE BEST way to learn about stresses and marks is TO STUDY THE SPANISH VOCABULARY ACCORDING TO THEIR CLASSIFICATION, (i.e. agudas, llanas, esdrujulas y sobreesdrujulas), this will help A LOT in determining the stress in a word.

As always, send me your comments or questions,

Luis