I am an intermediate speaker of Spanish.
From what I remember, if there is no emphasis mark, the default is to emphasize the second-to-last syllable.
Why then, are there words that have accent marks on the second-to-last syllable?
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Sign up to join this communityI am an intermediate speaker of Spanish.
From what I remember, if there is no emphasis mark, the default is to emphasize the second-to-last syllable.
Why then, are there words that have accent marks on the second-to-last syllable?
If these words are diphthongs, i.e. double vowels, it's to separate them from hiatus.
Examples of diphthongs, magia, rabia and possibly mundial. Examples of hiatus sounds would be podía, había, día, prometía, sonríe, dormía, sonríe, fríe etc ..
If its diphthongs versus hiatus its because the "ia" is pronounced different to "ía" due to the double vowel sound rules.
There's a webpage on it here, https://www.berlitz.com/blog/spanish-vowels-dipthongs