Spanish Acute Accent - Acento Agudo / Tilde - Spanish Accents and Pronunciation

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La Tilde - Acute Accent - Spanish Pronunciation

Accents may look strange to anyone whose native language doesn't have any, but they are extremely important in Spanish. Leaving off the accent on a word is a spelling mistake, and may cause confusion.

The Spanish acute accent or tilde (á, é, í, ó, ú) serves two purposes:

1. It indicates that the normal rules of word stress are being overridden. The following table lists the normal rules and has examples of words that follow them as well as words that need accents because they break the rules.

			Exceptions
a.	Words that end in a consonant other than N and S have stress on the last syllable.	calor estoy salud abril	árbol lápiz
b.	Words that end in a vowel, S, or N have stress on the penultimate syllable.	agosto nosotros señora	sábado jesús perdón
c.	Most two-vowel combinations diphthong* unless one of them has an accent (exceptions and additional info)	cuarto diciembre junio	mediodía miércoles frío
	*Are pronounced as a single syllable

2. Acute accents are also used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, such as sí (yes) vs si (if) - learn more.

3. Acute accents are added to verbs with attached object pronouns - learn more.

Note: The tilde over the letter n (ñ) is something else entirely - learn more.

Typing Accents More Spanish Pronunciation

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