📖LearnModule 15 · Lesson 25 of 30Proficient User · CEFR C2 mastery — the capstoneUnit 5 · La gramática de la precisión
Los acentos que cambian el sentido
Module 15 of the free Spanish course (CEFR C2 mastery — the capstone), lesson 25 of 30: Fifth and last: the accents that change a word. On this page: 12 words with their genders and respellings, the rule, a watch-out line, the conjugation table and the audio — the study notes behind the workbook's QR.
Respellings follow the course’s say-it key; the stressed syllable is in capitals. Print this lesson’s flashcards (PDF) — the words on the front, the English and respelling on the back.
La regla · The rule
Fifth and last: the accents that change a word, and the almost-right word. Sé is I know, se is the pronoun; sí is yes, si is if; aún is still, aun is even; más is more, mas is a literary but; dé is give, de is of. Ten pairs, and a spellchecker catches none of them.
Y también · And also
And the mot juste: at C2 nothing is ungrammatical; things are merely not what a Spanish writer would have said, and only reading fixes that. When a sentence feels slightly off, change the VERB before the structure — in Spanish, the precision lives in the verb.
Ojo · Watch out
The accent is the meaning: sé and se, sí and si, aún and aun, más and mas, dé and de — no spellchecker catches them. When a sentence sonar un poco falso, change the VERB before the structure. solamente is the full word for solo, and it needs no accent either.
servir, presente — the table
yo sirvo · tú sirves · él/ella/usted sirve · nosotros servimos · ustedes sirven · ellos/ellas sirven
Do it now — on paper
Say all 12 words aloud twice from the respelling, then once from the Spanish spelling alone — begin with sé.
Copy every word with its accents on paper; then cover the English column and write each meaning back from the Spanish.
Write out servir, presente in full from memory, every person, and check each form against the table above.
This free course is the reading half. The writing half — write-in lessons, daily practice pages with built-in review, self-checks and a full answer key — is the companion workbook series, The Spanish Ladder: one workbook per module, fifteen in all, released band by band with the Basic band (Modules 1–5) first.
Keep these words
Turn this lesson’s words into flashcards, then space your reviews — the two habits the research behind our study guides backs hardest.