Spanish Accent Marks

I will explain a few rules on how to know when to use accent marks in Spanish. I recommend you jot down the rules somewhere because just watching this once you will probably forget them. I do give you a quick chance to practice at the end. Thanks for watching. Let me know if you need further assistance.

There have been some comments about how the accent mark on miércoles is over the E. I know, I just wrote it quickly. Thanks for pointing it out :)
Also, I've had a few people comment about the word "chofer" in Spanish. Depending on where you speak Spanish, it can be pronounced chofer (with the stress falling on the e) or chófer (with the stress falling on the o).

Here's a link with the rules:

Part 2:

[shreetree]

OMG! Thank you so much!! My finals start really soon, and I had NO idea where to put the accent mark... My teacher just told me to memorize the word and remember where the mark goes, which was really hard. I couldn't figure out where the stress was, but now I actually get it!!! Muchas Gracias!!

[moc]

For the life of me, even if I do memorize the rules, I can't hear the stress of the syllabus on 99.9% of the Spanish words. Help me please.

[aliciamora]

THIS IS THE FIRST VIDEO TO EVER HELP ME GET I WATCHED THIS VIDEO FOR LIKE AN HOUR AND I FINALLY AFTER 5 MONTHS OF TRYING TO LEARN I FINALLY GET Im sososososo happy rn

[natassiabonyanpour]

I have been taking Spanish for a whole month in college and have my first exam tomorrow. I could not grasp the concept of accent marks until your video. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[ValiantMike]

Setting accent marks has been the number 1 biggest problem I have ever had in Spanish, making me lose many points in essays and exams in general. These rules are simple and the explanation was very clear. Thank you very much! :)

[cassymoretto]

I always thought accents were so difficult and hard but as you proved, they're quire easy! Thank you SO much this helped me for my Spanish test

[mpervious]

this makes so much sense now. my spanish teacher just told us these rules without examples and I was completely lost

[냥-nr]

I have quiz in Spanish class tmr, I think this will help me a lot to get well for my quiz. I was so confused about accents but I think now I got it by watching this. Thank u:)

[sanaaarifuddin]

I was confused when reading the rules in my textbook. This certainly made it a lot easier. So helpful! Thanks!

[Ericanious]

It's so difficult for me to know where the stress is occurring, but your video has helped immensely and bumped my success on the practice up a couple letter grades, thanks!

[alonso-mbpj]

omg this was so easy! thank you so much! you thought me what my high school spanish teacher couldn't teach us for 3 years in 10 mins :D

[multilingual]

Then you have the words which are spelled alike but have different meanings, so the accent mark is used to differentiate.  Examples: Te (pronoun) Té (beverage) más (more) mas (poetic form for "pero"), Tú (meaning "you") and tu (meaning your). De ( meaning "of") and dé (the subjunctive and the familiar singular form of the verb "dar".  The list goes on,

[Pianist]

Oh my goodness thank you so much!!!! I grew up in the States and learned how to speak spanish at the same time I learned english, but I never learned how to write in spanish. This helped a lot because most words in spanish are spelled phonetically, but I had no idea how to use accents. Thanks for the great video :)

[senorbelles]

good question. If it's 3 or more syllables back it doesn't matter how the word ends.

[unsavourylittlerunt]

Lo que sirve bastante para saber dónde van los tíldes es decir por ejemplo, fántastico fantástico y si tienes dudas seguir con fantastíco y fantasticó

[SOT]

I have My AP test tomorrow at 8:00a.m. This video Kinda Helped me

[judyc]

Thank you for this great video! I'm taking my bilingual Spanish test in a few weeks and I've always had trouble figuring out where the accent marks go.

[XjwX-joyx]

Gracias man you help me a lot now I understand more about the accent marks In español haha

[jamesferguson]

Hey, I'm just starting to learn Spanish and have been wondering about the accents for a while. This helped, so thanks.

Firstly, I've never heard the third out of four things described as "first-to-last" before, I'd call it "second last" and would understand "second-to-last" or "next-to-last". In linguistics they called it the "penultimate" syllable. I’m curious whereabouts “first-to-last” is in common use.

Anyway, I wanted to say, the rules seem simpler to me if they're just these two:

1. If the word ends in a vowel, n, or s then we 'expect' the stress to be on the second last syllable. If it's anywhere else, add an accent.

2. If the word doesn't end in a vowel, n or s, then we 'expect' the stress to be on the last syllable. If it's anywhere else, add an accent.

Just a thought. Thanks again.

[gabeewsuk]

very helpful video! great clarification!