Spanish language: Stress and Accentuation

Stress and Accentuation (Acento y Acentuación)

The Spanish words may be stressed on the ultimate, penultimate or antepenultimate syllable.

According to the Spanish Grammar they are called respectively palabras agudas (stressed on the ultimate syllable), palabras llanas (stressed on the penultimate syllable) and palabras esdrújulas (stressed on the ultimate syllable).

The stressed syllables may be easily recognized in writing because of the following rules:

The words terminated by a consonant, except for N, S, are stressed on the ultimate syllable (i.e. they are palabras agudas), cf.:

manual manual, pared wall.

The words terminated by a vowel or N, S are stressed on the penultimate syllable (i.e. they are palabras llanas), cf.:

gato cat, cantan they sing, menos less.

All the words, that are stressed not in accordance to the above rules, have a graphic accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) on the stressed vowels, cf.:

sofá sofa, carbón charcoal, detrás behind, árbol tree,

bolígrafo ball pen, lámpara lamp, pájaro bird.

NOTE: All palabras esdrújulas bear graphic accent.

Besides this, there are used diacritical accents (acentos diacriticos) to distinguish words with different meanings, cf.:

el the (for masculine) vs. él he
mas but (conj.) vs. más more (adv.) etc.

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