Re: OT: Spanish "me da feliz"

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 12:37 AM, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> When it comes to  orthography, though, a word that ends in a consonant other
>  than "n" or "s" always has ultimate stress *unless marked otherwise*.
Yes, I should have been clearer that there are exceptions.  But the
motivation behind the orthographic rule is the fact that the vast
majority of words ending in those letters have penultimate rather than
ultimate stress.

>  There are a ton of nouns that end in "n" that have final marked
>  stress,
capitán, almacén, baliarín, botón, atún... lots and lots with -ión...

> and probably a number of singular nouns that end in "s" that have final stress too
...like the terribly apropos «estrés» ? :)

> (at present, I can't think of a singular  noun in Spanish that ends in "s").
Si no en español, ¿tal vez en «inglés»?

Lots of ethnic nouns in -és, actually.  albanés, danés, dinamarqués,
escocés, finés..
It appears that E is the most popular accented vowel before s in general:
burgués, cortés, ravés, través...compounds with -piés (ciempiés)..
después (not a noun, though)..

Several adverbs/prepositions in -ás; a very few words in -ís (país);
adiós; autobús

>  The reason that final stress is marked orthographically on words
>  ending in "n" or "s" is, I figure, because there are so many
>  morphological "n" or "s" endings where stress isn't final
Makes sense to me.


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>