Learning Spanish - Accents and Other Diacritic

Today we’re going to discuss accents and other diacritics. These are marks on top of vowels and consonants that alter their pronunciation and meaning.

Ñ

Ñ is a commonly encountered consonant in Spanish. It’s sounded as as an “n” at the end of a syllable, followed immediately by “y” leading consonant.

It is distinct from “N”, which shares the same pronunciation as English. There is no equivalent in English.

For Vietnamese speakers, this is the exact same as the nh consonant, such as “nhà” and “những”.

Ñ Examples

• español
• niño

Ñ Linguistic Elements

The consonant “ñ” is entirely distinct letter from “n”. It is a “voiced palatal nasal”. Let’s break this down:

Voiced means the vocal chords vibrate. To convince yourself of this, you can hum while voicing ñ and feel the vocal chords vibrate.

It’s place of articulation is palatal, where the tongue is placed on roof of the mouth at the palate. This is the same case as for the English “n”. The nuance is the positioning, which is central in mouth, slightly further back than “n”.

It is nasal stop as air is forced through the nasal cavity. Again, this is the same as the English “n”.

Ñ Practical Application

Accent

The diacritic is used in Spanish to mark stress. It’s used to override the default rules of word stress.

Word stress is not for pronunciation, it’s changes the context and therefore the word. Much like Vietnamese.

Word Stress

If a word ends with a vowel, “n”, or “s”, the stress is on the second-last syllable:

• bur-reet-to (burrito)
• sen-ñor-reet-ta (señorita)
• o-la (hola)

Else, if the word ends on a consonant, then the stress is on the last syllable:

• ohs-pit-tal (hospital)
• ah-roez(arroz)

Accent Examples

• adiós (ah-dee-ose)
• teléfono (tell-ee-fone-no)

Contrast this with the accent-less variants:

• adios (ah-dee-ose)