¿Puedes ayudarme con la lengua española?

[Chris Wilkinson]

I've got some questions that I keep on forgetting to ask at school so I would apreciate it if you could help me:

What's the rule with accents? My text book doesn't cover this and I keep on putting them in the wrong places.

Pronounceation of the preterite: What's the difference between, say, miró and miro. This may be a bit difficult to explain, but if you can that'd be great.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

[kIndal]

Re: ¿Puedes ayudarme con la lengua española?

What's the rule with accents? My text book doesn't cover this and I keep on putting them in the wrong places.

this one is really hard has some rules I don´t remember them prefectly I will write them If I can, other guys???? I am from sciences...

Pronounceation of the preterite: What's the difference between, say, miró and miro. This may be a bit difficult to explain, but if you can that'd be great

el miró: he looked
yo miro: I look

[Waku]

Hard to explain

but basically:

spanish pronounciation is grave by default, i.e. the stress is in the penultimate syllable: gato, mano, miro. For this reason a grave word that ends in vowel or n or s (vast majority) have not accent. Otherwise the pronouciation is given by the accent: cañón, miró, mirar (this one doesn't end in vowel/n/s).

miro has the stress like in record (adj)
miró has the stress like in record (verb)

[Dr. Nick]

miro is a verb. It is the verb "to see" in the first person of the singular. It is equivalent of [i] see.
miró is the verb "to see" as well, only in third person of the singular. It is equivalent to saying [He] saw

I hope that helps.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

gringo input

I learned to (as a general rule that of course has exceptions - spelled with the accents) stress the second to last syllable in longer words. Is this repeating what Waku wrote? I say it because he only used short words...

[Waku]

Re: gringo input

Originally posted by Marquis de Sodaq
I learned to stress the second to last syllable in longer words. Is this repeating what Waku wrote?

Yes, as long as the last letter is a vowel, n or s (tomate, miran, caravanas); otherwise the stress is in the last one (atacar, español, libertad); and there's not an accent to change the rule (América, civilización, Cádiz, ataqué, defendÃ, marqués)

[Waku]

If I were you I wouldn't pay so much attention to this subject.
No one is gonna blame you if you forget to write an accent (lots of spanish speakers do), on the other hand the only way to improve your pronounciation is listening and repeating.

Do you know what I think is the big problem for English speakers? VERBS, we have lots of tenses/persons and we use them ALL.

[Henrik]

And so does the french and germans
It is a real pain to learn those three languages (Spanish, German and French).
I only have to learn French and German but it is still hard

[Jay Bee]

Originally posted by Henrik
And so does the french and germans
It is a real pain to learn those three languages (Spanish, German and French).

Well, but if you already know French, learning Spanish is a cakewalk (and viceversa). At least that's what I have been told!




Hey Chris, welcome aboard! You've earned a place in the Apolyton Hispanica Location List . I assume you post from London (or is it too much to assume?)

As Waku correctly put it, don't worry too much about the accents just yet. Once you have mastered the pronunciation, the accents are no longer a problem.

[Chris Wilkinson]

Well, but if you already know French, learning Spanish is a cakewalk (and viceversa). At least that's what I have been told!

I find Spanish a lot easier than French...maybe because me gusta mucho el español y odio el frances...

I also teach myself Russian, the pronunciation is wierd because they all sound very drunk!

Hey Chris, welcome aboard! You've earned a place in the Apolyton Hispanica Location List . I assume you post from London (or is it too much to assume?)

I actually live in a small town called Oundle (100 miles north(ish) of London, near the city of Peterborough) but it doesn't matter.

As Waku correctly put it, don't worry too much about the accents just yet. Once you have mastered the pronunciation, the accents are no longer a problem.

One problem is that I've only been to Spain once (when I was 10ish) and that was before I started to learn the language (I've been doing it for 4 years now), but I'm going on an exchange in October which should be useful.

Thanks for the advice, BTW.

[Dr. Nick]

Near Petrograd and learning Russian! How appropriate!

[Shaka Naldur]

don´t worry about the accents, they are quite hard,
the spaniards also make mistakes while writing