Pronunciation, Natural Stress, and Written Accents Posted by Transparent Language on Feb 11, 2008 in Uncategorized
PART I
One of the things I often noticed about my Spanish students was the difficulty they had knowing where to place the stress when pronouncing words. I don’t remember learning this explicitly in my high school Spanish classes (although I probably did) and I suppose I expected my students to intuit this aspect of the language—I tried to avoid bogging them down with tedious “rules” and instead wanted them to build awareness on their own. This worked for some of my students, but for others, it simply did not. For them, I broke out the rules. And since correct stress (knowing where the emphasis-denoted by a written accent or not-goes in a given word) is one of the quickest ways of improving your oral skills and facilitating comprehension for those listening to you, maybe this is one place where the rules are worth really nailing down. Knowing these rules also, in turn, tells you where the accents belong when writing in Spanish, something many native speakers are not always great at themselves!
So, here it goes.
In Spanish- as opposed to English- the natural stress has a fixed spot: any deviation from this placement requires a written accent. For all words ending in a vowel, n, or s, the natural stress falls on the vowel in the second-to-last syllable. For any words ending in a consonant OTHER than n or s, the natural stress is on the vowel in the last syllable.
Because of this, we know that casa is pronounced “cAsa”, examen is pronounced “exAmen”, and papel is pronounced “papEl”. When we pluralize words, we always want the stress to remain on the same vowel as the singular. This explains why, in the words above, only the plural of examen requires a written accent: casas and papeles are fine the way they are, but exámenes needs the accent to signal that we should say “exAmenes”. Without an accent, the word would be pronounced “examEnes” and that would be incorrect.
Got it??
Vowel, n, s = natural stress on second-to-last syllable
casa cAsa
examen exAmen
papeles papEles
hablo hAblo
mercado mercAdo
pesos pEsos
All consonants except n,s= natural stress on last syllable
pared parEd
papel papEl
reloj relOj
ordenador ordenadOr
Stress is somewhere other than its natural place=a written accent is needed:
autobús autobus not autObus
música mUsica not musIca
México MExico not MexIco
cartón cartOn not cArton
habló hablO not hAblo
Test it out by reading aloud. If a word doesn’t have a written accent, the rule of the natural stress tells you where to put the emphasis. If the word does have a written accent, it’s even easier—just stress whatever vowel carries the accent. And when writing, say the word to yourself and decide if the natural stress and the actual stress correspond—if they do, no accent is needed. But if the actual stress is somewhere else, put that accent in there.
Now, this isn’t all of it. What happens when two vowels are next to one another? Which vowel takes the stress or carries the written accent? This has to do with diphthongs and strong and weak vowel sounds, and makes things a bit more complicated. I will address this in Part 2 of “Pronunciation, Stress, and Written Accents.”
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Comments:
Vince:
Best I’ve seen yet on where to put stress!
Vince
Sebastian:
Eres muy inteligente niñis estoy orgulloso de ti :o)
Henny Houston:
I just now read this article and I agree: best I’ve seen on where to put stress. Henny
Don Alejandro:
Absolutely best page/site I’ve ever read relative to spanish. I’m trying to learn and not at all good at it, but between facial expression, voice and my hands, I manage (mas o menos). I admit I tend to lean heavily on the thought that actual panish speaking people will appreciate that I’m trying, and only the ones who actually know me laugh right then. The other’s – well I suspect they at least wait until I’m far enough away I can’t hear them.
Anyway, I love this site/page.
donr