La Clase de Español - The Spanish Class
Tildes/ Accent Marks
¡Buenos días!
Do you know what the dot on a lower case i or j is called? It is called a “tittle”. Other words that also describe this dot is a superscript or a diacritic dot. Because we are so accustomed to our English language, we may find it hard to see that little dot as an accent mark, but it is.
In Spanish, there are three diacritics. The most popular one is the acute accent. It can be found only above vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) and it denotes stress or emphasis required in the syllables of certain words; it is used to differentiate between tenses—present, past, and future; to demonstrate between a question or a statement; and, very importantly, it is used to differentiate between words that look alike but have different meanings.
To me, the most dangerous one is the tilde or diacritical squiggle (that little wiggly line above the n). In a previous lesson, I told you that “n” (pronounced ehnay) and “ñ” (pronounced ehnyay) are two completely separate letters. Let’s try to remember that! Because as we saw last week, we could be saying something quite embarrassing if we used an “n” in place of an “ñ”.
The most easy-going accent mark in Spanish is the diaeresis (ü). That’s those two little dots hovering over the ‘u” that you see there. It’s easy going because there are not many words with that particular mark.
However, when you do come across it it’s usually over a “u” and just after a letter “g”. As you will see in the two highlighted examples below, it would not be a big deal if you were to leave out the diaeresis in a word, as the meaning of the word would remain the same. However, if you want to set your level of writing at a high standard you should make sure to dot your u’s when needed.
Here are some examples of words that are accentuated and unaccentuated along with their meanings:
There are a number of rules that you can memorise that will equip you to know when and where to use the acute accent (the most popular) but we will look at that at a later time. For now, just be aware of these three diacritical marks and that should set you up nicely on your journey to speaking fluently.
Next week we will learn to speak in the present tense. ¡Que tengan un domingo maravilloso!