When do i use spanish accents

Here are some examples of Spanish words with accent marks that break rule 1. And here are examples of words that break the second rule. Accent marks are also used in Spanish to differentiate between words that are pronounced and therefore spelled the same but that have different meanings: homonyms. Spanish accents are also found on all interrogative words when used in a question, indirect question or embedded question.

When these words are not used in a question or indirect question, but rather as a pronoun, there is no accent mark. Here are three example sentences of this situation:.

El chico que dijo eso es mentiroso. The boy who said that is a liar. No trabajo cuando estoy enferma. Remember, pronouns take the place of a noun, while adjectives describe nouns. That car. Por eso estoy nerviosa para el examen. I forgot to study yesterday. This book is as interesting as that one. You can click this icon to quickly change between keyboards any time, without going into your system preferences. You can also have a small keyboard icon stay on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen.

Each word in Spanish contains an accent, a syllable that is stressed, but these don't always have to be marked with an accent mark. The rules on why and where to place accents can be difficult to understand for non-native speakers. We hope that the following explanations help:. The accent does not need to be marked. Most Spanish words fall into this category.

Examples: me-sa, za-pa-tos, pa-dre. This does not need to be marked either. Fortunately, there are a few key rules which govern the use of accent marks and stresses within Spanish. That means that, once you understand and learn them, this seemingly confusing aspect of the language suddenly makes a whole lot more sense, and you will have a far greater understanding of how pronunciation works. Written accents have three main functions within the language. The first is to separate words which would otherwise be spelled identically, the second is to signify questions, while the third and perhaps most important function is to help indicate which syllable of the word should be stressed, or emphasised, when spoken aloud.

A stressed syllable can be broadly defined as a syllable that is given greater emphasis, relative to the other syllables around it. This may be signalled through pronunciation in several different ways, including increased vowel length, increased loudness, or a change in pitch. All Spanish words have at least one stress.

Within the Spanish language , stress is functional, meaning that the location of stressed syllables can alter the meaning of the words being spoken. Words where the penultimate syllable is stressed are said to be paroxytone and a total of On the other hand, words where the final syllable is stressed are said to be oxytone.