The stress rule in Spanish (2024)

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A stress in a word simply means a lengthened syllable.
Every word in Spanish has one stress. If you put more than one in thenit sounds like there are two words. It is important to get it in thecorrect place because if you do not, you may not be understood or evenmisunderstood.

If the word has an accented letter á é íó ú then the stress is on that syllable. Easy.
intervención, hablé, cámara,sandía, azúcar etc.
But what if it does not have an accent?

The 'nose' rule (for words without an accent)

I learned this rule from a Michel Thomas CD course. I did not inventthis rule.
It is a way to remember and decide which words have the penultimate(second tolast) syllable stressed and which has the last syllable stressed.
NOSE has vowels, n and s. If a word is a nose word then itends in a vowel, n or s. You stress the penultimate syllable.
If the word is not a noseword then you stress the last syllable. In these examples, I haveunderlined where the stress is to make things easier:

"Nose" words - thepenultimate (second to last) syllable is stressed
lista
normalmente
casi
vuelto
tribu
llaman
quinientos

Not a "nose"word - the last syllable is stressed
animal
navigar
soledad
There aren't many words in Spanish that end inotherconsonants exceptfor foreign words such as 'internet'.

If a word has only one syllablethen you can say itwithout thinking about it because there is only onesyllable to stress - lo, el, la, tú, de etc.
You will soon get used to deciding where the stress is. You will evenbe able to hear where it is because if you hear a new word thatcontravenes the nose rule then you think "oh, there must be an accentin it" e.g. champú, habitación and díficil.
Becareful! - I have noticed that Spanish people on the internet sometimesmiss the accent out because they can understand what they mean. Thiscan confuse foreigners for example, one of my friends sent me thismessage:
¿Es para que nos de tiempo de pensar el regalo?
Which took me a long time to work out because they missed the accent onthe word 'dé'. The correct sentence is:
¿Es para que nos dé tiempo de pensar el regalo? = Itis to give us time to think about the gift?

AlsoI have noticed that they sometimes miss the initial upside-downquestionand exclamation mark -¡¿ in theirsentences.
Ican recommend reading comics or magazines that interest you as they donot (or should not) have mistakes in them. They are more interesting toread and you read dialogue which is important to learn as you can pickup common everyday words.

Adding and removing the stress mark (which is called an 'acute accent')

Thereare times when you remove the acute accent. The simple rule is that ifit makes no difference to the sound, remove it. I generally see it whenmaking a word feminine or plural when a word has a stress mark at theend:
inglés→ingleses
inglés→inglesa
objeción→objeciones
noticethat if you put the accent back in and SAY it, then it makes nodifference to the sound so that is why it is left out in these cases.See below under 'other uses of the accent'.

BUT!
You put anaccent in some words for a different reason. The accent is used toforce the stress to be on the syllable that you expect it to be. I seethis often when putting pronouns (such as lo, la and te) on the end ofverbs:
¡Diga! = tell! (the stress is on diga)
¡Dígame! = tell me! (the accent forces the stress back on to dígame)
Ifyou are still unsure, try taking out the accent and say the word. Youwill see that without the accent, the stress would be on thepenultimate (second to last) syllable.
It is important when learning to SAY words as well as reading them to engage more of the brain in to the learning process.

Other uses of the accent

You may see it used when it makes no difference to the sound. Thishappens when you want to distinguish it from another word that is speltthe same. You should have seen these for example:

el = the	él = he
tu = your (familiar form)	tú = you (familiar form)
si = if	sí = yes

It is also used on certain question words or where a question is implied:
¿cuándo llegan? = When do they arrive?
No sé qué hacer = I don't know what to do (implying 'what do I do?')

Iwish to reiterate that on the internet and texts, the Spanish sometimesmiss accents out which is not a problem for them as they know what theymean.