Learn about Spanish stress and accentuation
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| Hi everyone. |
| Welcome to The Ultimate Spanish Pronunciation Guide. |
| In this lesson, you'll learn about stress and accentuation in Spanish. |
| Let's cover stress first because that'll make understanding accentuation easier. |
| Like English, Spanish places stress on specific syllables in a word. |
| There are generally two main rules that govern where the stress is placed in Spanish. |
| The first rule applies to words that - |
| End in a vowel |
| End with the letter N |
| Or end with the letter S |
| For these types of words, the stress is placed on the second last syllable of the word. |
| Listen to Alex pronounce a few words that contain one of these features. |
| nada (nothing) |
| origen (origin) |
| zapatos (shoes) |
| Most Spanish words tend to fall into this category. So it's quite likely that it’s the second to last syllable that needs to be stressed. |
| The second rule applies to words that - |
| End in a consonant not including the letter N or the letter S |
| For these types of words, the stress is placed on the last syllable of the word. |
| For example... |
| doctor (doctor) |
| ciudad (city) |
| comer (to eat) |
| Quite simple isn't it? |
| Let's have a quick test to see if you've grasped the material. |
| Where should the stress be placed in the following words? |
| niñas (girls) |
| nadador (swimmer) |
| computadora (computer) |
| Most Spanish words will obey either one of these two rules. So it's best that you memorize them. |
| Okay. Now let's move on! |
| Enter the Spanish accent. |
| Spanish uses the acute accent, which looks like this. |
| The acute accent is used to indicate that the syllable must be stressed, regardless of the two previous stress rules. |
| To put it another way, always stress the syllable which contains this accent. |
| Let's take a look at a few examples. |
| compró (bought) |
| compró |
| As you can see, this word ends with a vowel. Normally, you would stress the second-last syllable. However, there's an accent over the letter O, indicating that it must be stressed, therefore we must stress the last syllable instead. |
| Let's take a look at another one. |
| médico (physician) |
| médico |
| Notice how the first syllable is stressed? That's precisely because of the accent marker. |
| What about this word? |
| él (he) |
| ...or this one. |
| el (the) |
| They both sound exactly the same right? |
| "That's because single-syllable words are already stressed naturally. |
| You cannot add more stress to a single syllable simply by placing an accent marker over one of the vowels." |
| So, if the pronunciation remains the same, then what's the purpose of the accent marker? |
| It's to differentiate words that would otherwise be spelled the same but have different meanings. |
| So while it doesn't impact how single-syllable words are pronounced, it helps to lift the ambiguity between words that would otherwise be identical. |
| And finally, this accent has one remaining function that we've yet to discuss. |
| Do you remember diphthongs? The merging of two vowel sounds when they're next to each other? |
| Well, whenever this accent appears over the letters I or U in a vowel group, it prevents them from being a diphthong. |
| Meaning you must pronounce them separately. |
| For example... |
| tía (aunt) |
| país (country) |
| mío (mine) |
| río (river) |
| Well, that's all for stress and accents. |
| In this lesson, you learned about stress and accentuation in Spanish. |
| In the next lesson, you'll learn about metaplasm in Spanish. |
| Do you have accents in your language? Share it in the comments. |
| See you in the next Ultimate Spanish Pronunciation Guide lesson! |
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