7.3.2 Written accents: acentuación grave o llana

Now that you have remembered how to divide words into syllables, we’ll move on to writing accents.

As you saw in the practice activity, where an accent falls in a word can change its meaning.  The same is true in Spanish, however, in Spanish we have a set of rules that explain where accents “should” fall.  When accents break this rule, we write in written accents to show where the accent does fall in the word.

There are three main categories of words: grave (aka llana), aguda, and esdrújula.

In this lesson, we’ll cover the biggest category grave (aka llana).

Why grave (aka llana)?

Since written accents are a basic part of the Spanish language, it should come as no surprise that there are words that refer to accent placement and these words are known to anyone who has gotten through upper elementary school in a Spanish speaking country.  Since Spanish is spoken over such a wide range of places, it should also come as no surprise that we sometimes find dialectal variation even in the names of grammatical terms.  So, in some places these words are called palabras graves and in others they are palabras llanas.  In this lesson we will use grave merely because it is alphabetically first.

What is a palabra grave

When a word’s strong syllable is the second from the end or penultimate syllable, it is a palabra grave.

When a palabra grave ends in -N,-S, or any vowel, we DON’T write an accent mark because expect those words to be graves.

If a palabra grave ends in any other consonant we DO write an accent mark because it is unexpectedly grave.  Here are some common examples of both.  One column is written 100% correctly and one column needs written accents.  Can you figure out which is which?  For each word, whish is the strong syllable?  Where do the accents go?