When we join a weak and a hard vowel, or two weak vowels, they create the sound of one syllable, called a diphthong. *Vowels can be divided into hard (A,E and O) and weak vowels (I and U).

These accents are called diacritical marks. These words are pronounced the same, but the accent helps avoid misunderstandings in written texts.

Tu (possessive) tú (subject) si (conditional) sí (confirmation) Their function is to differentiate words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, such as: *In some situations, accents are not really used for pronunciation. There are also other special cases for the use of accent marks (or tildes): This includes words that are stressed on the second to the last syllable, or the one before that, which is common with compound words.Įxamples: dí-me-lo (an imperative + pronouns) du-chán-do se-(gerund + reflexive pronoun), fan-tás-ti-co.įoreign language words used in Spanish may present some exceptions to these rules. However since these are exceptions, we need to write an accent mark to show where the stress is placed) Examples: di-fí-cil, ár-bol (both words en in I, and would usually be in the second category, with the stress on the last syllable. *If the stress of the word is placed anywhere besides the places in situations explained in the above rules, the accent mark is written to show readers the syllable on which to pronounce the stress of the word. *With words that do not end in s, n, or a vowel, and which do not contain an accent mark, the stress is accented on the last syllable of the word. Most Spanish words fall into this category. *If the word ends with s or n or any of the 5 vowels, a, e, I, o, u, then the accent is placed on the second to the last syllable of the word. We hope that the following explanations help: The rules on why and where to place accents can be difficult to understand for non-native speakers. 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. Accent marks in Spanish, á, é, í, ó, ú may seem insignificant, but they represent an important way to show how words are pronounced.

E with an accent mark word