When we learn to read we need to become familiar first with the letters, then with the syllables and finally with the words. Just as a sentence is made up of a combination of words, a word is made up of syllables. Each syllable is the stroke of voice that is formed to pronounce a word. For example, the word horse has three blows of the voice (ca-ba-llo) and the word two has only one blow of the voice. However, not all syllables are the same, as there is always one syllable that sounds with greater intensity (which would be the stressed syllable) and another that sounds with less intensity (the unstressed syllable).
The unstressed syllable
To recognize unstressed syllables in words, you have to look at the intensity of the voice when pronouncing them. For example, in the word window we can see that the unstressed syllables are ven and na, since both are pronounced less loudly than the syllable ta. Sometimes the words have an accent or accent, which indicates that the syllable that contains it is the tonic and, therefore, those without the accent or accent are the unstressed syllables. In the word cajón, ca is the unstressed syllable and jón is the stressed syllable.
The unstressed syllable provides very useful information, since it tells us how we should pronounce it, in this case with less force than the stressed syllable. For a person who speaks Spanish as their own mother tongue, the distinction between unstressed and stressed syllables is not difficult to learn, but the same is not the case for people who learn Spanish as a foreign language, who often make mistakes by confusing both types of syllables. .
The tonic syllable
The stressed syllable is the opposite of the unstressed syllable. Consequently, we recognize a syllable as a tonic when its pronunciation is stronger than the rest of the syllables that make up a word. If I say the word clock, we observe that there are two syllables, re-loj, and that one of them is said with more intensity, in this case the syllable loj. The best way to distinguish one type of syllable from the other is through its pronunciation, which accurately informs us when it comes to specifying which is the stressed syllable and which is the unstressed syllable.
Learning syllables
Teachers and pedagogues know that the best way to learn syllables is by playing with them in a spontaneous and participatory way and avoiding theoretical explanations. It is very common to become familiar with the syllables by separating them with hyphens and indicating which of them is the tonic or the unstressed. Children in their first school years study syllables intuitively and from this basic knowledge they can already tackle the rules about the stress of syllables, diphthongs and hiatuses.
Photos: iStock - Imgorthand / Hasloo
