La Pronunciación - Fun with Phonetics

It's great if you are really getting the handle on grammar; your confidence in learning Spanish is soaring. But guess what? If you don't know how to pronounce some words you are going to get some really impatient Spanish-speakers out there, listening to you slurring slovenly in Spanish.

Basically, the default rule when sounding out a word is to stress what's called the penultimate syllable. This means second-to-last syllable for the layperson. Let's look at the following examples. I've included some approximate phonetic representations of the words. Also, the stressed syllable is in ALL CAPS:

Spanish Word	Approximate Phonetic Representation
palabra	pah-LAH-brah
preferencia	preh-feh-REHN-syah
computadora	kohm-poo-tah-DOH-rah
estadounidense	eh-stah-doh-oo-nee-DEHN-seh

You'll notice that in each word above, the second-to-last syllable is pronounced with a more stressful tone. Hence, the penultimate syllable.

Now, there are exceptions to practically every rule in Spanish, and phonetic ones are no different. The LAST syllable is stressed when the word ends in a hard consonant, such as d, t, r, or z. The ones ending in r should be no surprise to you, since every infinitive verb ends in an r, and you've been stressing the last syllable there. Observe:

Spanish Word	Approximate Phonetic Representation
feliz	feh-LEES
Universidad	oo-nee-behr-see-DAHD
tolerar (v.,to tolerate)	toh-leh-RAHR

Still other words incorporate the diacritical(accent) mark to override the previous 2 rules. In these cases, the accent is either part of the word itself, or is necessary to be added when another syllable is added to the end of the word, which usually happens when pluralizing. For example, joven doesn't contain an accent, but when another syllable is added to it, the stress of the singular word follows the modification. Therefore, el joven(sing.) becomes los jóvenes. Here are some other words that contain accent marks:

Spanish Word	Approximate Phonetic Representation
lámpara	LAHM-pah-rah
número	NOO-meh-roh
canción	kahn-SYOHN

Reversing the example dealing with joven--->jóvenes, we also see that when we pluralize canción, we can drop the accent this time because the stress will be placed on the penultimate syllable already: las canciones. The new phonetic representation will be kahn-SYOHN-ehs.

One must remember that Spanish is indeed a very phonetics-based language. Omitting, or adding unnecessarily, an accent mark can drastically destroy the meaning of what you are trying to convey. For example, a verb conjugated in the preterit has accent marks on the last part of the verb in the yo and él forms. Adding an accent forces the speaker to stress the last syllable, which naturally tells your listener that something happened in the preterit tense:

Hablo la verdad. I speak the truth.

There is a grand difference between the meaning of that sentence and one with an accent on the verb:

Habló la verdad. He/she/it spoke the truth.

I recommend the book Say It Right In Spanish: The Easy Way to Pronounce Correctly (Say It Right! Series). It is a great book to have in your library, and contains very simply explained examples.