Spanish Lessons

¡Buenos días!

I’m sorry for the absence, I have been very busy with work… Filing is not very fun, but someone has to do it, I guess.

Haha, well, today I bring you this short explanation about vowel combination, which will help you when accentuating words in which there are two or more vowels together.

First, let’s have a review of the vowels and how they are classified.

Well, as you can imagine, different types of vowels with others make different vowel combinations when they are side by side. We can find these categories:

Very well, now, how does one divide words knowing this combinations?

Let’s start.

If you have two strong vowels, they won’t want to be in the same syllable. So, we will divide them so that there are no fights.

Let’s take the example from the graphic and divide the words.

• polea:  po - le - a
• empleo: em - ple - o
• oreo: o - reo

That was easy, wasn’t it?

Now, if you have a strong and a weak vowel, they will make a good couple, so why separate them?

Again, let’s do the division with the ones in the example:

• aceite: a - cei - te
• cierre: cie - rre
• causa: cau - sa

What happens then with the two weak vowels? Well, they won’t fight for a spot, so we’ll leave them like that. UNLESS, one of them has an accent (´) on them, in which case you will have to divide them.

Let’s see how it works.

• viuda: viu - da
• diluir: di - luir
• encía:  en - cí - a
• fluído: flu - í - do

For the triphthongs they will always be together, not matter what. 

There are other exceptions for this rule, it’s a combination between a weak accentuated vowel and a strong vowel. They will have to be divided.

For example:

• dúo: dú - o
• reúne: re - ú - ne
• oí: o - í

There you go, that’s the end of this lesson. I’ll leave a list of words and you can send me a message or a submission with the division of the words.

Thank you very much for reading,

¡Nos vemos pronto!

Here’s the list.

Try dividing by syllables these words.

1. tierno
2. evaluación
3. labio
4. Europa
5. puerto
6. gratuito
7. caoba
8. aéreo
9. teatro
10. río
11. vieira
12. guau
13. aloe
14. trueno
15. crujía