How to Use Spanish Accent Marks for Beginners

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Do the rules for how to use Spanish accent marks confuse you? In this video, we share a step-by-step process that will make it 10X easier.

Accent marks in Spanish are very important because they help you know how to properly pronounce a word. If you put emphasis on the wrong syllable in a Spanish word, it can change the word’s meaning drastically.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn all about what is known as the “silaba tónica” in Spanish. This is the syllable that will be stressed or emphasized in a word, and every word in Spanish has a silaba tónica.

In Spanish, you might pronounce the first syllable with the most intensity, or the last syllable. To distinguish between where the emphasis should land in a word, the Spanish language classifies four different types of syllables.

For example, let’s look at the word “caballo.” This word can be divided into three syllables. LLO, the last syllable, is called “última.” BA is called “penúltima,” and CA is called “antepenúltima.” If a word has four syllables, the next syllable would be called "ante-antepenúltima.”

Once you understand how to distinguish between the different possible placements of the siliba tónica, you can move on to learning about the four types of words in Spanish.

The four word types are known as: agudas, llanas, esdrújulas, and sobreesdrújulas. These word types are a vital part of the process for following Spanish accent rules.

For example, “palabras agudas” have the silaba tónica (the emphasized syllable) on the última silaba (the last syllable). You can see and hear this in the word “canción.”

To learn more about where to place the accent and emphasis for the three other types of words in Spanish, keep watching the video above!

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