In the previous lesson, we've learnt about Spanish upside-down question and exclamation marks. They are often used to begin interrogative and exclamatory clauses or sentences respectively. Sometimes when studying Spanish, you will see the line above a letter. It is also one of diacritical marks in Spanish. A diacritic or diacritical mark is a glyph often used to indicate the change in the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. There are three main diacritical signs in Spanish, a tilde, an umlaut, and an accent.
Diacritical marks in Spanish
Tilde
A tilde is a curved line abovea letter. It is used on a vowel to indicate a change in pronunciation. It shows that a following nasal consonant (n or m) had been omitted. So the sound would be made by putting your tongue to the top of your mouth's palate.
For example:
tãtus for tantus
quã for quam
año - year
mañana - tomorrow
Español - the language from Spain or a Spaniard
Umlaut
An umlaut or a dieresis is placed over "u" when it's pronounced after "g". It changes the sound of gu combination into "w" sound.
For example:
güe
güi
pingüino
averigüé
Accent mark
Accent marks are often used as an aid in pronunciation. Accents are used to put the stress on the correct syllable or to distinguish some words that are pronounced alike but have different meanings (homonyms). They are frequently used with some words such as cuál (which) or qué (what) in questions.
Note: Accents in Spanish can only be writtern over five vowels which are a, e, i, o, u.
Below are some common homonyms in Spanish that you should bear in mind.
- de - preposition: of, from
dé - third-person singular subjunctive form of dar, "to give" - mas - but
más - more - se - reflexive and indirect object pronoun
sé - I know - el - masculine article: the
él - he - tu - your
tú - you - si - if
sí - yes - te - object: you
té - tea