Why Spanish marks its accents
Every Spanish word is stressed on exactly one syllable. That is true of English too, but English gives you no clue in writing: you simply have to know that it is PHOtograph but phoTOgrapher. In Spanish the last letter of the word usually tells you where the stress goes, and the written accent mark appears only when a word breaks that default.
Without an accent mark
The default stress
Ends in a vowel, -n or -s
casa
house
hablan
they speak
amigo
friend
Ends in any other consonant
hablar
to speak
español
Spanish
ciudad
city
Unstressed does not mean swallowed. English weakens unstressed vowels to a schwa, but Spanish keeps all five vowels crisp wherever they sit: in profesor the o and the e stay full, clean vowels. Stress in Spanish means louder and longer, not clearer.
With an accent mark
If a word is stressed somewhere other than the default, the accent mark shows the stressed vowel: café ends in a vowel but is stressed at the end, fácil ends in a consonant but is stressed at the front. Words stressed on the third-to-last syllable, like teléfono, always carry the mark.
teléfono
telephone
música
music
fácil
easy
café
coffee
The accent appears on á, é, í, ó, ú and nowhere else. The mark on ñ is not an accent; it is part of the letter.
Stress alone can change the word
Move the stress to another syllable and Spanish speakers hear a different word, the way English hears a difference between a REcord and to reCORD. Listen to each pair and follow the stressed syllable.
papa
potato
papá
dad
bebe
he/she drinks
bebé
baby
esta
this (one)
está
he/she is
The accent that separates identical sounds
A handful of short words sound the same, so Spanish puts an accent on one of them in writing to keep the pair apart (the tilde diacrítica). The accent does not change the pronunciation, and nothing in English works this way, so these have to be memorised as pairs.
| With accent | Means | Without accent | Means |
|---|---|---|---|
| él | he | el | the (article) |
| tú | you | tu | your |
| sí | yes | si | if |
| sé | I know | se | himself / herself / oneself |
Question words always carry an accent
Question words like qué (what), dónde (where) and cómo (how) always take an accent, in direct and in reported questions.
¿Qué quieres?
What do you want?
¿Dónde vives?
Where do you live?
¿Cómo estás?
How are you?
