Spanish ACCENT Marks - Rules and PRACTICE (2024)

Welcome 😊 to our grammar lesson about Spanish accent marks (also called “tildes”).

In Spanish, only vowels can have accent marks. When they do, they look like this:
á, é, í, ó, ú
Or, if they are capitalized:
Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú

In this lesson, we will learn the rules to decide, after hearing a word, whether we should write it with an accent mark.

Note:The rules we will learn don’t apply to question words such as “qué”, “dónde”, etc. They also don’t apply to monosyllables (one syllable words). At the end of the lesson, we have included two sections about those types of words.

Introduction: strong and weak vowels

There are two types of vowels in Spanish: strong and weak. This is important for accent marks, as we will see.

Strong vowels are a, e, o and weak vowels are i, u.

Rules for accent marks

In order to know whether a word we hear needs an accent mark, we follow 3 steps. Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything at first, we will see examples soon.

Step 1 – Number the syllables

We number the syllables from right to left.

Numbering syllables can get tricky when two vowels appear together (or with just an “h” between them). The following box explains what to do in that case:

Step 2 – Identify the stressed vowel

Hear the word again. Try to identify the vowel that sounds stressed, and the syllable it belongs to.

Step 3 – Apply the proper rule and decide

If the stressed vowel is in syllable 1…

If the stressed vowel is in syllable 2…

If the stressed vowel is in syllable 3 or higher…

… then that vowel always needs an accent mark.

Examples

Let’s practice with the following 6 words. Some are written correctly, but others need an accent mark:

• arroz, Fernandez, mesa, vivia, despues, simpatico

We will hear each word and follow the steps to decide whether it needs an accent mark:

Practice

Quiz

Take this short Quiz to practice accent marks:

Exercise

A few more words! Try to decide if the following words should have an accent mark. (We have highlighted the vowel that sounds stressed). Then check the solutions below.

Solutions

Accents on question words

Question words such as “¿qué?” or “¿dónde?” have an accent markwhen they play an interrogative role. The rules learned above don’t apply here.

Here is the list of question words:

• dónde (where)
• adónde (to where)
• cómo (how)
• cuál (which one)
• cuáles (which ones)
• cuándo (when)
• cuánto/a/s (how much, how many)
• qué (what)
• quién (who, singular)
• quiénes (who, plural)

Let’s take “dónde” and “qué” as examples, and read some sentences where they have an accent mark and some sentences where they don’t:

dónde:

¿Dónde estás?
Where are you? (interrogative role)

No sé dónde tengo mis gafas.
I don’t know where I have my glasses. (although there are no question marks, the role is interrogative, because someone is wondering where the glasses are)

Este es el lugar donde pongo mis gafas.
This is the place where I put my glasses. (no interrogative role)

qué:

¿Qué quieres?
What do you want? (interrogative role)

Ellos me preguntan qué quiero.
They ask me what I want. (although there are no question marks, the role is interrogative)

Esta es la casa que he comprado.
This is the house that I’ve bought. (no interrogative role)

Accents on monosyllables

In general, monosyllables (one-syllable words) don’t have accent marks.

However, there are a few exceptions. Some monosyllables have several different meanings, and they need an accent mark only when they have a particular meaning.

Here’s the list of monosyllables affected by this, and their meanings with and without accent marks: