When is accentuated AS WHEN and WHERE

We all know that "how", "when" and "where" are accentuated when we are talking about a question ("How do you like your coffee?", "How long does it take to get to work? "," Where do you live? ") or an exclamation (" How have you lost weight! "," How long have you not seen us! "," Where are you getting that I don't know anything about? you!"). However, not all interrogative and exclamatory sentences are so obvious how are you; that is, they are not always placed well between question marks (?) well between exclamation marks (!) But sometimes we can also find interrogative or exclamatory sentences indirect; that is, they do not use question marks or exclamation marks.

In this lesson from a TEACHER we will discuss when is accentuated AS WHEN and WHERE and studying the different contexts in which it is necessary to place the graphic accent on these words.

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and, more specifically, his work the New Spelling, published in 2010, the terms "how", "when" and "where" are three tonic words that

must have a tilde when it comes to interrogative or exclamatory pronouns. In this way, the main function of these terms is to introduce interrogative or exclamatory sentences.

These sentences can be:

• Direct interrogative or exclamatory sentences: How old are you? How it rained today! Where do we meet on Thursday?
• Indirect interrogative or exclamatory sentences, in which these words are not placed at the beginning of the statement but are integrated within it, which does not have either question marks or exclamation marks: I don't know how to do it, I have to call the doctor to tell me when I can go for a consultation, I need to ask where there is a pharmacy.

We have previously seen the two linguistic contexts in which we must stress "how", "when" and "where". However, as we mentioned at the beginning, these three words do not always carry diacritical tilde, since, when they work as adverbs, relative pronouns or conjunctionsThese terms stop being stressed words to become unstressed words, so they are not written with an accent.

As an example you have these sentences:

• When it rains, I like to stay home reading
• The bar where I saw your brother is in the center of Madrid
• Since you didn't tell me anything, I didn't call you all afternoon.

In this other video by a TEACHER you will find a lesson on the Relative Pronouns.

As we have seen previously, there are some occasions in which, by spelling rules, we must accentuate "how", "when" and "where" since they have interrogative or exclamatory value. However, when it comes to conjunctions, relative pronouns or adverbs, these words are unstressed and, for this reason, they should not be stressed graphically.

At first glance it may seem like a minimal difference and difficult to perceive, but we can resort to different tricks to know how to differentiate one context from the other. For example, "how" always has a graphic accent when it roughly means "in what way", "in what way". Likewise, "when" and "where" are always written with a diacritical accent when they can be paraphrased by "at what time" and "in what place" or "to what place", in the case of "where".

In all those cases in which we cannot substitute "how", "when" and "where" by these three formulas, this means that these words are unstressed and not stressed, as in sentences like I will go when i want or The cinema where we saw Almodóvar's last film is my favorite, since the first sentence could be paraphrased by "I will go whenever I want" and "The cinema in which we saw Almodóvar's last film is my favorite".

Another little trick consists of reflect on the interrogative or exclamatory value of these three words, since, whenever they contain a question mark or exclamation mark, they must be accented because they are stressed words, as in the sentence He asked me when we were going to see him.

We hope we have helped you to differentiate the linguistic and syntactic contexts in which we must emphasize HOW WHEN and WHERE.