Spanish ALT Codes

Why Spanish only uses the acute accent. Unlike French, which uses grave, acute, and circumflex, Spanish uses only the acute mark (´), and only to indicate stress on an irregularly stressed syllable. If you see está with an accent, the stress falls on the final syllable; without it (esta), stress defaults to the penultimate syllable. This is why most words don't need accents — Spanish stress is rule-based, and the accent mark is an exception flag.

The ñ is its own letter. In Spanish, ñ is not "n with an accent" — it's a completely separate letter of the alphabet, ordered between n and o. It represents a palatal nasal sound, like the ny in English "canyon." The tilde on top originated as a scribal shorthand for a doubled n (nn) in medieval manuscripts, which is why Spanish año (year) comes from Latin annus.

The ü (u with diaeresis) is rare but matters. You'll see it in words like pingüino (penguin) and vergüenza (shame). It tells you to pronounce the u that would otherwise be silent after a g. Without the diaeresis, guerra is pronounced "GEH-rra" (silent u). With it, güero is "GWEH-roh" (u is pronounced).

Inverted punctuation is only used in Spanish. The inverted question mark (¿) and exclamation (¡) open questions and exclamations: ¿Dónde estás? / ¡Qué bueno!. This convention was formalized by the Real Academia Española in 1754 to help readers know from the start of a sentence whether it's a question — useful in Spanish because, unlike English, word order alone often doesn't distinguish questions from statements.