How To Type Spanish Letter and Accents. The Ultimate Guide

Learning the Spanish language implies not only learning new vocabulary and grammar structures but also acquiring the spanish language system. In order to master the language, you need to know the different accents or acentos 

The spanish accent or el acento español  is a real headache for learners whose mother tongue doesn’t have accents. If you are learning the spanish language you need to know how to use them and how to type them in a PC keyword.

The Spanish accent or acento español is an orthographic mark (´) which can be found on any vowel. This is an extra symbol that is added to a letter. La tilde -as this symbol is known as in Spanish-  stresses or emphases a particular syllable.

This accent mark is referred to as diacritic mark or diacritical sign. Diacritics are important in the Spanish language since the lack of it or placing it in a different syllable may change the meaning of the word. Sábana or bed sheet has a tilde on the first syllable. It means this syllable carries stress. If you omit it you’ll be using a completely different word: Sabana which is translated as savannah. 

The Spanish alphabet or abecedario has 27 letters in comparison to the english language alphabet which has 26 letters. Both languages share the same alphabet letters except one: ñ. It is an N letter with a tilde on it or virgulilla. This letter is roughly pronounced as en-ye. The letter ñ has a nasalized sound like the english n in onion. 

Pronouncing an n sound instead of an ñ sound can change the meaning of the word. For example, year or año takes a ñ letter. If you don’t know how to pronounce it and use an n letter instead, you'll say ano or annus. 

The letter ñ is always followed by a vowel since in the spanish language all syllables have a vowel on it. 

The Spanish language has three different accents: the tilde or virgulilla (~), the acute accent or la tilde (´) which can only be found on the five vowels and the diaeresis or diéresis (¨) which can only be used on the vowel U. 

The letter U with a diaeresis can only be found in syllables like -gue and -gui. 

Nowadays thanks to technological advances many students do their homework or write articles and essays on text editors.  Once they have mastered Spanish letters and accents, they need to know how to type them.

For those learners who have a US international keyboard on Windows they only need to press apostrophe (´) plus the vowel they want to stress. 

The Spanish language is characterized by the use of question marks and exclamation marks at the beginning and at the end of the question or exclamation. They are the upside down question mark and the upside down exclamation mark.

Students can also use character codes if they can’t use the apostrophe button. Since each character in the computer has a code it is easy to type any letter remembering the number. It is important to use the number pad on the right side of the keyword not the one at the top of the letters. 

Once students have learnt how to type Spanish accents in lower-case, the following step is to learn to type Spanish accents in upper-case since there are many words whose first letter is emphasized such as Árbol or tree, Ángel or angel, éxito or success, among others. 

Learning how to type Spanish letters and accents is of paramount importance to start mastering the language. Spanish accents are important since the lack of them will result in a change of meaning of the word.