Stress in Spanish

Stress in the Spanish language is functional, meaning that the placement of stress helps to determine the meaning of a sentence or phrase. To change the stress on a group of letters changes the meaning of the word (an example is changing the stress in 'celebre' [celebrate, 3rd person present subjunctive] to 'célebre' [famous] to celebré [I celebrated]) Stress also functions to show an individual's unique way of speaking, to show emphasis, or to illustrate mood, attitude, and emotion. There is some variance between dialects; A speaker from Argentina will pronounce the Spanish word for beret as boina with the stress placed on the entire first syllable while a speaker from Colombia will pronounce the word boína with the stress on the i creating a third syllable for the word. Both pronunciations are correct, but each will sound strange and unfamiliar to a speaker of the opposite dialect.

Transcription

In Spanish there are only 2 degrees of stress. Strong or heavy stress is marked with a ’ over the vowel. Unstressed parts of a word are emphasized by placing ˘ over the vowel if a mark is needed, otherwise it is left unmarked in traditional Spanish transcription.

Position

See es:Acento prosódico#En español

Stress may occur in three positions in Spanish: on the final syllable (oxytone), the penultimate syllable (paroxytone), and the antepenultimate syllable (proparoxytone).^[1] Vowel-final words and those ending in -s are stressed on the penultimate syllable.^[2] This accounts for around 80% of Spanish vocabulary.^[3]

Creating contrasts

All Spanish words have at least one stress when they are used in isolation. The word para [pá-ra] can be a verb (the singular pronoun form of "stop") or a preposition (in order to, for). When words are used the stress can be dropped depending on the part of speech. "para el coche" can mean "stop the car" if the stress remains. If the stress is removed, it means "for the car."

In English to create contrasts can be made by shortening sounds, changing the volume of the word, or moving the pitch of the phrase. For example: "This is her car." emphasizes the owner of the car. If the stress is changed to say "This is her car.", the emphasis is on showing what objects belong to a specific person. In Spanish, the stress is almost always changed by reordering the words. Using the same example "Este coche es suyo" emphasizes the owner and "Éste es su coche" emphasizes the object.

Word stress categories

All Spanish words can be classified into one of four groups based on the position of their stress. If the last syllable is stressed it falls into the "aguda" category. Aguda words generally end in a consonant other than "n" or "s" or are the product of a conjugated verb that ends in an accented, stressed vowel. If the stress falls on the second to last syllable, it is classified as a "llana." Llanas typically are words that end in "n," "s," or a vowel. Any exceptions to this rule must have a written accent. If the stress is placed on the third to last syllable or the fourth to last syllable, they are categorized as "esdrújulas" or "sobresdrújulas" respectively. Note that to be in either of the last two categories, the stressed syllable must be accented in order to break the rules of the first two categories. No single Spanish word is classified as a sobresdrújula: only compound words like "diciéndonosla" (to be telling it to us).

References

• Dalbor, John B. Spanish Pronunciation: Theory and Practice. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1997. Print.

External links

• Erichson, Gerald. "Stress and Accent Marks." About.com:Spanish Language. About.com, 2012. Web. <http://spanish.about.com/od/spanishpronunciation/a/stress_accent.htm>.