Regional Dialects The Rules of Stress

Spanish Grammar: Accentuation

In order to pronounce Spanish words with more than one syllable, the following rules must be learned well enough so that they can be applied automatically to any unfamiliar word.

A note on Regional Dialects

If you were to ask individuals living in Australia, New Orleans, London, and Dublin to pronounce the word "schedule" you might be surprised by the differences in the pronunciation and yet each English speaker would understand the other. The same applies to natives of Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Costa Rica, and other Spanish-speaking countries. Each has a unique pronunciation for certain words and yet each speaker would be understood.

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The rules of stress

Words that end in a vowel, or in the consonants n or s, normally are stressed (accented) on the next to the last syllable. In the following list, the words are divided into syllables, and the syllable receiving the stress is underlined.

ju-lio	July	u-no	one, a
a-mi-go	friend	fe-cha	date
tra-ba-jo	work	vier-nes	Friday

Words that end in a consonant, other than n or s, usually receive the stress on the last syllable.

ve-nir	to come	ca-lor	heat
ac-triz	actress	pa-pel	paper
le-er	to read	mu-jer	woman

Note: Since infinitives end in -ar, -er, or -ir, they receive the stress on the last syllable.

ha-blar

to speak

es-cri-bir

to write

Words which are not stressed according to these two rules bear a written accent on the syllable that is stressed in pronunciation.

fá-cil	easy	a-quí	here
di-fí-cil	difficult	ár-bo-les	trees

Exception: Adverbs that end in -mente create an important exception to the preceding three rules. These -mente adverbs have two stresses. The first stress falls on the stressed syllable of the adjective from which is was formed, and the second stress falls on the next to last syllable.

bo-ni-ta-men-te

prettily

fe-liz-men-te

happily

Certain words bear the written accent in order to distinguish them from other words otherwise spelled alike and pronounced alike, but having an entirely different meaning.

el	the	él	he
mas	but	más	more
mi	my	mí	me (object of a prep.)
si	if	sí	yes
solo	alone, single	sólo	only
te	you (pronoun)	té	tea
tu	your (possessive adj.)	tú	you (subject pronoun)

Note: Ti (you, object of a preposition) is never accented since it cannot be confused with any other word.

The written accent is used to distinguish the interrogative or exclamatory mode from the relative use of pronouns and adverbs.

cuando	when	¿cuándo?	When?
como	like, as, how	¿cómo?	How?
que	that, which	¿qué?	What?
quien	who	¿quién?	who?