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The Spanish Language - Grammar, Pronunciation, Spelling, Definitions


DonRocks

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Unless there's a topic that specifically demands its own thread (and there may well be), this thread can be a catch-all for any questions about learning the Spanish language - either Spanish Spanish, Latin-American Spanish, or even Portuguese (although that language, of course, is different enough to be considered distinct). We also have a diverse-enough member base where similar threads could be started for any given language; I happen to be dabbling in Spanish at the moment.

My question is about the pronunciation of Escobar, as in, "Season 2 of Narcos is now out on Netflix." 

The default accent in Spanish is generally the penultimate syllable - there are numerous exceptions, and this is obviously one of them. Why is there no "acento agudo" over the "E" in Escobar? Stated differently, given that there is no acento agudo, why isn't the second syllable accented?

With verb infinitives ending in "ar," the final syllable is (usually?) accented, but I believe that with Escobar, the initial syllable gets the accent. If I'm wrong about this, then the entire question may be moot.

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In Spanish as in Portuguese, the final syllable is accented if it ends in "l" or "r", unless there's a written accent elsewhere. Unlike French, accent marks are not supposed to be optional over capital letters, so if "Escobar" has the stress on the first syllable, it's misspelled. What really puzzles me about Spanish, in this regard, is how many names are written with an accent mark that is redundant, such as Pérez. I see them all the time.

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On 9/9/2016 at 9:31 PM, The Hersch said:

In Spanish as in Portuguese, the final syllable is accented if it ends in "l" or "r", unless there's a written accent elsewhere. Unlike French, accent marks are not supposed to be optional over capital letters, so if "Escobar" has the stress on the first syllable, it's misspelled. What really puzzles me about Spanish, in this regard, is how many names are written with an accent mark that is redundant, such as Pérez. I see them all the time.

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure "Escobar" does have the stress on the final syllable. One other thing I've noticed (in "Narcos") is that "Gaviria" (the President of Colombia during Escobar's reign of terror) has the accent on the second syllable - this is because the "ia" is treated a dipthong (not always the case, cf: Sangria), so it's also the penultimate syllable.

(A good dictionary will have all these rules spelled out on 1-2 pages - there are obviously rules for pronouncing the "ia" at the end of a word, but my dictionary is in the next room. That's the great thing about Spanish - you can pronounce every word (I think?) in the language just by looking at it; in comparison, English is a really nasty language to learn.)

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