Spanish accent marks, or diacritics, such as the acute accent in música (music), the tilde in español (Spanish), and the diaeresis in pingüino (penguin) are important spelling features in Spanish. They also serve several purposes, including indicating correct pronunciation, distinguishing between words with the same spelling, and forming questions. Learning when and why to use Spanish accent marks is surprisingly simple. 

This guide will show you examples of the types of diacritical marks in Spanish, how and when to use them, and how to easily type Spanish accents without having to copy and paste or hunt for a hidden menu on your computer. 

What are the 3 types of accent marks in Spanish? 

Spanish uses three types of diacritical marks. These are the only letters with Spanish accent marks or diacritics. 

  • the acute accent mark over vowels á, é, í, ó, ú
  • the tilde in the letter ñ
  • the diaeresis over the letter ü

Acute accent mark (á, é, í, ó, ú) 

Technically, only the diagonal mark over vowels is called an “accent,” which is one type of diacritical mark. While French accent marks include both the acute accent é and the grave accent è (sometimes in the same word) the Spanish accent mark is always in the same direction. This acute accent will only appear over vowels, and never more than once per word in Spanish. 

  • ¿Y tú? ¿Cuándo vas a la reunión? ¿El sábado o el miércoles? = And you? When are you going to the meeting? Saturday or Wednesday? 
  • ¿Quién toma más café? ¿Tu papá o tu mamá? = Who drinks more coffee? Your dad or your mom? 

N with a tilde (ñ) 

The letter ñ or “eñe” (pronounced EH-nyeh) with the tilde is considered the 15th letter of the Spanish alphabet, following n “ene.” The official Spanish alphabet has 27 letters. 

  • En España los niños hablan español. = In Spain, the children speak Spanish. 
  • La niña va al baño por la mañana. = The girl goes to the bathroom in the morning. 

The letter ñ is pronounced like the “ny” sound in “canyon.”

  • Estoy estudiando español. = I am studying Spanish.

Diaeresis (ü) 

The diacritic “umlaut,” or two dots over a vowel, is common in languages like German. It’s only used over a ü in a few specific Spanish words. 

  • No soy bilingüe, pero estudio la lingüística. = I’m not bilingual, but I study linguistics. 
  • ¡Qué vergüenza! Se me olvidó la billetera en casa. = How embarrassing. I forgot my wallet at home. 

When a word has the letter ü, you pronounce both this ü and the following vowel separately. 

  • un pingüino = a penguin

Common examples of Spanish diacritical marks

You’ll encounter Spanish accent marks right away as you begin communicating and using basic Spanish words, like numbers, days of the week, and basic personal information. It’s best to consider them part of the spelling of the word and learn where they belong.

Spanish English
el cumpleaños birthday
el día day
la dirección address
el español Spanish
el francés French
el inglés English
miércoles Wednesday
el número de teléfono phone number
Señor/Señora Mr./Mrs.
sábado Saturday
veintitrés twenty-three (23)

When to use Spanish accent marks

Are Spanish accent marks and diacritics optional? Will you still be understood if you leave them out? While misspellings and omitting accent marks is rather common in informal writing such as texting, Spanish speakers learn and use accent marks as part of the spelling of the word. 

Omitting them would be incorrect and possibly confusing. Learn how and when to include the accents and diacritics both to avoid possible misunderstandings and to show your mastery of Spanish. 

To indicate stress and proper pronunciation

Part of proper Spanish pronunciation is knowing which syllable to emphasize in a word. Most Spanish words follow rules for which syllable to stress when speaking. Accent marks tell you that this word breaks the regular pattern. 

  1. If a word ends with a vowel, “n,” or “s,” the stress falls on the penultimate syllable. 
  2. If a word ends with a consonant (other than “n” or “s”), the stress falls on the last syllable.

An accent mark often tells you that a word doesn’t follow the rules, and indicates where you should stress the syllable. 

For example, observe the días de la semana (days of the week) in Spanish that follow the rules, with the stress on the second-to-last syllable as expected.

  • lunes (Monday)
  • martes (Tuesday)
  • jueves (Thursday)
  • viernes (Friday) 
  • domingo (Sunday) 
  • una semana (a week) 

But these days break that expected pattern. The accent mark will help you pronounce it correctly. 

  • miércoles (Wednesday)
  • sábado (Saturday) 

As you learn Spanish with tools like Rosetta Stone’s TruAccent feature, you’ll notice that many common words break the expected patterns of stress. TruAccent can help you master them from the first day.

  • un periódico (a newspaper)
  • un bebé (a baby) 
  • un bolígrafo (a pen)
  • un lápiz (a pencil)
  • un sándwich (a sandwich)
  • ¡Adiós! (Goodbye!)

Sometimes two vowels together, such as “ia” will be pronounced as a diphthong, but an accent mark shows you to pronounce the vowel distinctly. 

  • una familia (a family) 
  • mediodía (noon)

To distinguish between homonyms

Sometimes short words with the same spelling can have the same pronunciation but two different meanings. To distinguish between these pairs of words, Spanish will often include an accent mark. This is common with one-syllable words like some Spanish pronouns.

Spanish Word Without Accent English Spanish Word With Accent English
de of/from dé give (imperative)
el the (masculine/singular) él he
mas but más more
mi my mí me 
se oneself (reflexive pronoun) or impersonal “se”  sé I know
si if sí yes
te you/to you (object pronoun)  té tea
tu your tú you

In the past, this rule was applied to demonstrative pronouns like este (this one) and esa (that one) but this rule was revised in 2010 by the Real Academia Española. Nevertheless, you may encounter older materials written in Spanish that use the outdated grammar rule. 

In question words 

As soon as you begin asking questions in Spanish, you will notice that each Spanish interrogative word includes an accent mark. 

Spanish Interrogative English
¿Cómo?  How? 
¿Cuál?/¿Cuáles?  Which? 
¿Cuándo?  When? 
¿Cuánto/Cuánta? How much?
¿Cuántos?/¿Cuántas?  How many? 
¿Dónde?  Where? 
¿Por qué?  Why? 
¿Qué?  What? 
¿Quién?/¿Quiénes? Who? 

This is especially helpful to remember the difference between ¿Por qué? (Why?), which includes the Spanish upside down question mark, a space, and an acute accent, and porque (because) which doesn’t have any of the three features, but is pronounced identically. 

  • ¿Por qué compras flores? = Why are you buying flowers?
    • Compro flores porque voy a visitar a mi abuela esta tarde. = I’m buying flowers because I’m going to visit my grandmother this afternoon. 

When these words are used in a non-interrogative way, they do not include the accent mark. 

  • ¿Sabes dónde estamos? = Do you know where we are?
    • Estamos en el restaurante donde vamos a comer mañana. = We’re at the restaurant where we are going to eat tomorrow. 
  • ¿Cuándo vas a comer? = When are you going to eat?
    • Solo como cuando tengo hambre. = I only eat when I’m hungry. 

Accents can change the meaning of a word

One small accent mark in Spanish can be the difference between two very different ideas. They not only change the pronunciation, but can change the meaning of a noun or the tense of a verb. To communicate without confusion, pay attention to tricky pairs of words. 

Spanish nouns that change meaning with an accent or tilde

Some common and amusing examples of word pairs where the accent matters are in this chart. 

Spanish Word Without Accent English Spanish Word With Accent English
un ano anus un año year
la carne meat el carné driver’s license
la cuna crib/cradle la cuña wedge
el Papa/la papa Pope/potato el papá dad
revolver to stir/to mix el revólver gun
sonar to ring/to sound soñar to dream

Accents are often part of verb conjugations

When you learn to conjugate Spanish verbs, changing their endings to match the subject, it’s critical to include accents where necessary, or it could disrupt the meaning, tense, or subject. 

It’s especially important to include accent marks only where necessary, because Spanish speakers very often omit subject pronouns like yo (I) and él (he), so the verb ending gives you this information. 

Spanish Word Without Accent English Spanish Word With Accent English
animo I encourage/I cheer el ánimo spirit/the mood
bebe he/she drinks el bebé baby
la cobre copper cobré I charged/I got paid
estudio I study estudió he/she studied
hablo I speak habló he/she spoke
el jugo juice jugó he/she played
el silencio silence silenció he/she silenced

How to type accents

There are many workarounds for typing characters like Spanish letters with accent marks, as well as Spanish punctuation marks. These general instructions will work in many cases, but some will depend on your device and application. 

For additional instructions on using a Spanish keyboard, or advice on how to type accents in any language, consult our full guides. 

On touch screens such as phones and tablets

On most devices with touch screens, like phones, you’ll be able to long press the character and a menu of options will appear. 

For other options, including helpful autocorrections, you can install specific keyboards for Spanish. 

On a PC

The easiest way to type accents on a PC with Windows 11 is to install the international keyboard. 

Follow these instructions: 

  1. Go to Settings > Time & Language > Language & Region
  2. Look for Preferred Languages and click on English (United States). Then click the three dots on the right and choose Language options.
  3. Look for the Keyboards section. If you’ve never opened this before, it’ll probably only contain a single keyboard icon labeled US / QWERTY. That’s the keyboard design you’re using currently. Click on “Add a keyboard” to the right of Installed Keyboards.
  4. A pop-up menu will appear. Scroll to “United States-International / QWERTY” and click on it.
  5. From now on, you have the choice of using either the standard US keyboard or the US International Keyboard. You can see which one is active in the lower-right side of your taskbar near the date. It will either read ENG / US or ENG / INTL. Toggle it on and off by clicking that, (or just tap Windows key + space bar). 

Now that you have the US International keyboard installed, let’s talk about ways to add Spanish accents and punctuation marks.

  • Acute accents (á, é, í, ó, ú): Press the right-hand Alt key and the appropriate letter at the same time. For example, right-Alt + a will result in á. Right-Alt + Shift + a will result in Á. 

Alternatively, type the apostrophe. Nothing will appear at first, but when you type the vowel, it will have an accent. If you want to type an apostrophe while the US International Keyboard is active, you’ll need to type a space. 

  • The tilde (ñ): Press the ~ symbol and then the n key. 
  • The diaeresis (ü): Press right-Alt + y for ü or right-Alt + Shift + y for Ü 

Alternatively, type quotations. Nothing will appear until you type the letter u. If you want to type quotation marks, you’ll need to press the space bar after you type them. 

  • Inverted question mark (¿): Press right-Alt + /.
  • Inverted exclamation mark (¡): Press right-Alt + 1.

On a Chromebook

The International Keyboard works similarly to the instructions above. 

  • Install the international keyboard by going to Settings>Device>Keyboard and Inputs.
  • Click “Input Settings” and “Add input methods.” 
  • Find “English (US) with International PC keyboard

To toggle between International keyboard and regular US English, use Ctrl + space bar. 

On a Mac

Here are the steps to type each special character using keyboard shortcuts that work in most programs on a Mac. Plus, bonus tips on how to type common Spanish punctuation! 

  • Acute accents (á, é, í, ó, ú): Press Option + the letter at the same time, then release both keys and type the vowel you want to accent. To get a capital vowel, press Option + Shift + the letter. For á, press Option + a. For Á, press Option + Shift + a.
  • The tilde (ñ): Press Option + n at the same time, then release both keys and type n again.
  • The diaeresis (ü): Press Option + U together, then release both keys and type u.
  • Inverted question mark (¿): Press Option + Shift + ? simultaneously.
  • Inverted exclamation mark (¡): Press Option + 1 at the same time.

Key Takeaways

Accent marks and diacritics are a crucial part of the Spanish language. The rules for using them are straightforward.

  • Acute accent marks go on vowels in Spanish, in the direction á, é, í, ó, ú, and tell you to emphasize that syllable.
  • An n with a tilde (ñ) is pronounced like the “ny” in “canyon.” 
  • A few Spanish words include ü. Pronounce both the ü and the next vowel separately.
  • All question words have an accent when used interrogatively. 
  • The accent makes a difference in meaning in pairs of words that are spelled and pronounced similarly. 
Immerse Yourself in Spanish