Acentuation - Stress

[Sancho Panther]

A very concise and lucid explanation of where to apply written accents:-

Stress
Stress falls on the last syllable of a word, e.g. comer,
unless the word ends in a vowel, n or s, in which case
the stress falls on the next-to-last syllable, e.g. andaba, comes.
All exceptions to this rule have an accent (´) on the
vowel to be stressed: lápiz, condición, magnífico.

I have literally copied and printed it out and pasted it into many of my text books and dictionaries. I find it most useful, I hope it will be equally helpful to some of you too.

STAY WELL!
S.P.

[Tomisimo]

Thanks for sharing this. I also try to boil down information to a clear, concise statement to make it easier to understand and remember. For a really long time now, I have explained it in an almost identical fashion:

Spoken stress/emphasis is normally on the last syllable, or is on the second-to-last syllable for words that end in a vowel, "n", or "s". Any words whose spoken stress/emphasis does not follow this need an accent mark over the vowel in the stressed syllable.

Note that with this, you *do* have to know how the word is properly pronounced. For example, "carácter" and "caracteres" might throw some people for a loop.

If you talk to native speakers, there is a whole intricate explanation involving palabras agudas, graves, llanas, esdrújulas, y sobreesdrújulas, etc. It's quite interesting, but for me it's harder to grasp.

[Sancho Panther]

Re-reading that slightly baffled me, surely there is no ambiguity there; it's "Carácteres" i.e. the same isn't it?

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by Sancho Panther

Re-reading that slightly baffled me, surely there is no ambiguity there; it's "Carácteres" i.e. the same isn't it?

Singluar: "carácter" spoken stress on the second "a".
Plural: "caracteres", spoken stress on the first "e".

Since the plural ends in "s" and the spoken stress is on the second to the last syllable, there's no accent mark.

[Rusty]

Although the stressed syllable is different in the plural, very few seem to know why. It's simply because this is an exception to the rule. There are only a handful of these.

English has all kinds of exceptions to the rules, so I wouldn't cry foul just yet.