Understanding and using accents in IB Spanish B

Learning a new language can be daunting. With new grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation to learn it is easy to get a bit confused at the beginning. But the beginning is where ensuring your understanding is correct is the most important as this forms the foundation for your progress thereafter. Spanish B teacher and Peak IB author, Helen Matthews, shares an excerpt from her previous Spanish B study guide explaining all about accents including what they are and the rules for using them. A fully updated version of our Spanish B study guide is now available.

Accents – what you need to know

• The accent is called a tilde and is always acute, which means it goes up: á é í ó ú

• You can only have one tilde on a word, and it only goes on vowels.

• ñ – the squiggle on the ‘n’ is called a virgulilla and sounds like ‘ny’: español, España

• ü – the u con diéresis is a rare accent used only with g+ue or g+ui, when you want to pronounce the “u” eg: ambigüedad, vergüenza, pingüino. You don’t pronounce the “u” in águila, guía.

• Accents differentiate certain monosyllabic words that are otherwise spelled the same:

  • sí = yes | si = if

  • él = he | el = the

  • mí = me | mi = my

  • té = tea | te = object pronoun

  • dé = subjunctive of dar | de = of

• Relative conjunctions used as direct or indirect questions, or nouns, take an accent:

  • Relative conjunction: que = that | cuando = when | porque = because

  • Direct question: ¿qué? = what? | ¿cuándo? = when? | ¿por qué? = why?

  • Indirect question: Le pregunté qué queria. = I asked him what he wanted.

  • Noun: No sabia qué hacer. = I didn’t know what to do.

• In 2010, the Real Academia Española removed the accent from solo, which means that solo now means both ‘alone’ and ‘only’. The accent was also removed from the demonstrative pronouns este (this one), ese (that one), and aquel (that one). Hooray!

• Basic rules for accents – Spanish words are categorized according to which syllable the stress falls:

  • Aguda: Words that have a natural stress on the last syllable. If they end in a consonant (but not -n or -s), they do not have a written accent: ciu-dad / le-gal. If they end in a vowel, -n or -s, they do have a written accent: com-pré / com-ió, and words ending -ción or sión.

  • Llana: Words that are stressed on the penultimate (second to last) syllable. If they end in a vowel (a, e, I, o, u), -n or -s, they do not have a written accent: ca-mi-no / es-cri-ben. If they end in any other consonant, they do have a written accent: cár-cel / fá – cil.

  • Esdrújula: Words that are stressed on an earlier syllable always have a written accent: fe-nó-me-no, pro-pó-si-to. If the addition of pronouns makes a verb longer (and so it becomes esdrújula), you need to add an accent in order to respect the original stress: da (give) but dá-me-lo (give it to me) / es-cri-be (write) but es-crí-be-me (write to me).

• If rules are too much for you to take in, just learn where to put the accent on the most frequent words you might want to use.

también  |  plástico  |  atmósfera

película  |  opción  |  ¿Cómo están?

rápidamente  |  jóvenes  |  aquí

profesión  |  fantástico  |  introducción

yo sé  |  música  |  exámenes

Continuing your IB Spanish B revision

Hopefully, you have found the information above useful. If so, bookmark the page so you can easily refer back to it at a later date. Having easily accessible reference material will help to make your revision process easy as you won’t spend valuable study time searching for materials you thought you had. If you are looking for help on developing your Spanish B vocabulary, check out our article 7 ways to learn vocabulary for IB Spanish B.

Study guides by Helena Matthews