How do you put the accent on Spanish words?

Answer 1

It lets you know which syllable is accentuated. All words have accents. For example, in English the word 'express' can be pronounced in two different ways depending on the usage. You can say:

'The express bus is late'

which puts an emphasis on the first syllable

'I'd like to express my feelings.'

which puts the emphasis on the second syllable.

In English, you typically just look at the context of the sentence to know which pronounciation is adequate. In spanish, there are rules for natural emphasis on certain vowels and accents are the exceptions to those rules.

The rule is that for words that end in 's', 'r', or vowel, the emphasis naturally falls on the second last syllable. If this rule is broken, an accent is added in. A good way to illustrate this is with the difference between papa and papá.

Papa ends with a vowel and so it has a natural emphasis on the second last syllable. This word means 'potato'.

Papá has an unnatural accent on the last syllable and it means 'dad'.

Answer 2

an accent mark is placed over a vowel in Spanish, changing the word's pronunciation and oftentimes, the meaning.

when there is an accent mark, extra emphasis is placed on the vowel.

accent marks on words are important!

Answer 3

First, it is an indicator that the accent of a word does not follow the normal convention. Jose would be pronounced OH'seh without the accent mark - José is the familiar oh-SEH.

Accents are also used to differentiate between words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. Si (without the accent) is "if". Sí means "yes."

Answer 4

Written accents marks in Spanish serve several functions. First, you should realize that Spanish is a very phonetic language. For the most part, it sounds like it is written. It has very simple pronunciation rules, and only one accent in a word, regardless of length. When the normal pronunciation rule for a word is not to be followed, a written accent mark (called a "tilde" in Spanish, not to be confused with the ~ in English) is used. "Teléfono" is one example of this.

Another useage of the accent mark is to denote "question words". "Quién, cuál, cuándo, cómo, por qué, qué" are used with the accent when asking questions, and may not have them when used in a statement.

Stll another useage is to differentiate meaning. Some words have different meaning depending on the use of the accent. Example: "Sí" means "yes", "si" means "if". "Cómo" means "how", while "como" means "like" or "as".

Answer 5

Press option and 'n' at the same time to get the tilde (like this ñ)

Press option and 'e' to get the forward facing accent (like this í)

Press the ~/` button and the option key at the same time to get the backwards facing accent (like this ò)