What is the name of the accent mark used in Spanish to indicate stress or distinguish between words?

What is the name of the accent mark used in Spanish to indicate stress or distinguish between words?

• A. Tilde
• B. Acute
• C. Cedilla
• D. Hyphen

Answer: (A)

In Spanish, the mark that shows where the stress goes in a word (and can also differentiate words) is called the tilde. It appears over vowels as á, é, í, ó, ú and helps indicate which syllable is stressed, as in sí (yes) versus si (if), or tú (you) versus tu (your). While you might hear the term “acute accent” to describe the kind of mark, the common name for this symbol in Spanish spelling is tilde. The other terms refer to different symbols: a cedilla is a different diacritic under c, and a hyphen is punctuation.

In Spanish, the mark that shows where the stress goes in a word (and can also differentiate words) is called the tilde. It appears over vowels as á, é, í, ó, ú and helps indicate which syllable is stressed, as in sí (yes) versus si (if), or tú (you) versus tu (your). While you might hear the term “acute accent” to describe the kind of mark, the common name for this symbol in Spanish spelling is tilde. The other terms refer to different symbols: a cedilla is a different diacritic under c, and a hyphen is punctuation.