An unstressed syllable lacks prosodic accent.
The Latin term syllăba is the etymological antecedent of syllable , a concept that mentions the phonological units that make up a word. This means that syllables are sounds that, through articulation, form the same phonic nucleus, which can be distinguished from the others based on the depressions in the voice.
The unstressed adjective , for its part, refers to that which is unaccented : its pronunciation lacks prosodic accent (the relief given to the pronunciation to give it more intensity).
What is an unstressed syllable
An unstressed syllable , in short, is a syllable that does not have prosodic accent . If we focus on any word , the stressed syllable will be the stressed syllable , while the rest will be unstressed syllables. It can be said, in this way, that words are made up of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables.
Let's take the example of the word "condolences" . It is a trisyllabic word since it has three syllables: pé – sa – me . The syllable pé is the stressed syllable because the prosodic accent falls on it and, according to the orthographic rules, also the accent . On the other hand, sa and me are unstressed syllables.
Link to spelling
Spelling also looks at how unstressed syllables and stressed syllables are distributed to determine whether a word is sobreesdrújula , esdrújula , grave (also called llana ), or acute . In the case of the previous example , "condolences" is an esdrújula word, since its stressed (stressed) syllable is the penultimate one. In our language, all words with a prosodic accent on the penultimate syllable have an accent (that is, all esdrújula words are written with an accent).
Learning to recognize unstressed syllables and stressed syllables is useful for reading and writing.
Due to a growing lack of interest in writing and its rules, society is little by little losing contact with this and other notions that are very important to correctly understand language . Nobody confuses the words "comré" and "compre" when speaking, but many people do so when writing, since the use of the accent is increasingly rare in daily communication, which includes the different instant messaging systems and the email.
To understand in depth the concept of an unstressed syllable, it is absolutely necessary, first of all, to have internalized the concept of accent ; in fact, both depend on the other for meaning. However, if someone decides to ignore them, or if due to the characteristics of their education they never meet them, they lose a large number of opportunities to create complex written messages and, why not, to enrich their oral communication with certain subtleties that They are only perceptible to those who master the language.
The unstressed syllable in Spanish and other languages
Compared to other languages, such as English or even Italian, Spanish has a spelling accentuation system that allows us to guess the correct pronunciation of a word unknown to us in an infallible way. In other words, if we learn correctly in which cases a word has an accent depending on whether it is acute, serious or over-esdrújula, as well as to recognize if we are dealing with an esdrújula, then we will be able to properly read any term in our language, something that does not happen in any of the two mentioned above.
This is not easy, but the reward of being able to use the language at an advanced level is very tempting. Thanks to knowing these rules, with their exceptions and special cases, it is possible to create complex speeches , play with words and develop ideas that exceed the limits of spelling. Furthermore, in certain cases the accentuation can be reversed to emphasize a term; For example, in the following sentence the word "goodbye" should be read with the accent on the "a": "I said -dios and not, 'ah god'."