Grave Accent Marks In Spanish

Induciomaro   Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:39 pm GMT
Anyway, Spanish keyboards have all three accents used in French: ´, ` and ^ (also umlaut: ¨, but this one is actually used). I'm not completely sure why, thought.
Franco   Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:50 pm GMT
Spanish keyboards have Spanish diéresis (¨), not umlaut despite both are graphically the same. Grave accent exists because it is used in Catalan too. As for ^ I don't know, maybe because there are many Spanish speakers willing to write in French? Not me of course.
Franco   Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:53 pm GMT
Well, now that I recall ^ exists so one can use pointers in Pascal. LOL.
Leasnam   Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:30 pm GMT
In Spanish, the accent marks are used solely for the purpose of indicating stress: where the stress does not fall at the default location (i.e. second to the last syllable), then it is betokened by an accent (cf 'próximo'). It does not relate to pronunciation as far as sound quality is concerned.
Franco   Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:53 pm GMT
<<In Spanish, the accent marks are used solely for the purpose of indicating stress: where the stress does not fall at the default location (i.e. second to the last syllable), then it is betokened by an accent (cf 'próximo')

>>
That is not the rule ." María" for example should not have acute accent according to that.
Leasnam   Tue Dec 22, 2009 12:57 am GMT
<<That is not the rule ." María" for example should not have acute accent according to that. >>

Funny you should mention that--"ia", "io" etc is the exception. After hitting Send Message I was hoping no one would catch it :D
E-Z   Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:49 am GMT
Good point Franco, that's cuz there is another rule, there are soft vowels (I, U) and strong vowels (A, E, O), so everytime there is a soft and a strong vowel together, they both sound as a single syllable, for example "Maria" which has two vowels Ma-ria, by default, it should be emphasized in the second last syllable, that is "Ma", but since we want to emphasize it in the last one "Ria", we put the accent in the soft vowel, that'd be the "I".

It sounds complicated but it's quite easy, it took me 10 minutes to know the "accent rules", and that way you always know when to put accents and when not to put them.
Induciomaro   Tue Dec 22, 2009 9:13 am GMT
I know it's diéresis, I looked for it in Wikipedia and the article in English said "umlaut". ^ is also "xor" in C.
Franco   Tue Dec 22, 2009 3:05 pm GMT
María probably was a bad example, what about " lápiz" instead?