When to accentuate YES

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The diacritical tilde it is one of the orthographic signs that allow us to differentiate the meaning of two or more words that are spelled the same; that is, they are homographs. Depending on the criteria that the stress rules establish, in addition to the correct pronunciation of the words, we can distinguish two words with completely different uses and meanings but which are nevertheless written the same shape.

In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to explain in detail what are the enunciative contexts to know when to accentuate YES. Keep reading!

Besides the "yes" with a tilde, in Spanish we have another word that we write the same, except for the tilde since it is a unstressed word and therefore we cannot accentuate it. Being an unstressed term, it needs to be supported by another word to be able to pronounce it correctly within the phonic chain.

As with the "yes" with a tilde, which we will see below, the "yes" without an accent can refer to two different types of words.

• On one side, "si" is a noun that refers to the name of a musical note, as in the following sentence: Every time he plays the same tune again, he always plays it out of tune.. In this case, it should not be stressed, since, following the general rules of stress, monosyllable words should not have an accent.
• On the other hand, "if" without an accent is, morphologically, a conjunction that we use in Spanish to introduce conditional sentences, for example: If it rains tomorrow, I won't go to the park with my friends. As we have pointed out before, this "if" is unstressed and should not be stressed. In addition, this "if" also works as a conjunction within the indirect interrogative sentences, typical of the referred speech or indirect speech, such as the following: He asked me if he knew what time the train arrived from Barcelona.

In the case of SÍ with tilde, we are in Spanish as two different types. First of all, we have the "yes" that corresponds to the reflexive pronoun of the third person singular, as in the example: My father is full of work and does not give more of himself.

This type of "yes" is easily recognizable because it always appears as a term in a prepositional phrase, in addition to its clear reflective value. Other possible combinations of this "yes" with prepositions are, for example: "by itself", "for itself", "in itself", etc., which, in some occasions, as they are constructions with a clearly reflective value, they appear intensified with the word "same": He does everything thinking only of himself, leaving others aside.

Secondly, we find another type of accentuated "yes", which, morphologically speaking, is a affirmation adverb: Would you like some more salad? - Yes please.

However, despite being an adverb, this word can be used also as a noun, and for this it is necessary to prepend a determining article (since these only precede nouns). Thus, in this way, the accentuated adverb "yes" becomes the nucleus of a noun phrase, "the yes", which also retains the diacritical mark: The president's yes stunned everyone else ministers who attended the vote.

In fact, perhaps the best-known work of the Spanish playwright and poet Leandro Fernández de Moratín has as its title, precisely, this adverb turned into a noun: The yes of the girls.

By way of summary, the word "yes" should be stressed when it corresponds to the adverb of affirmation, the pronoun reflective personal third person singular or with the noun with affirmative value that means approval Of something.

On the other hand, we do not write "if" with a diacritical mark when we are referring to either the name of the musical note or the conditional subordinate conjunction.

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