For starters, the most common words in any language are the articles. English has only the, a and an. Spanish has more articles because it differentiates between gender and number. The following chart shows the masculine articles.
| Singular | Plural | |
| the | el | los |
| a, an | un | unos |
The feminine articles are:
| Singular | Plural | |
| the | la | las |
| a, an | una | unas |
Typically, the masculine articles precede nouns ending in “o” and the feminine articles precede nouns ending in “a,” but that is not always the case. These exceptions can be tricky for new students of the language.
Abrelatas, paraguas, mapa, planeta, problema. That’s can opener, umbrella, map, planet, and problem. All ending in “a” or “as.” According to grammar rules, they should have feminine articles attached to them, but they don’t. In the case of abrelatas and paraguas they are not even plural. However, there is another rule for this phenomenon. Words ending in “ma,” “pa,” and “ta” usually take masculine articles. Memorizing those endings alleviates some of this confusion.
That is not the only issue with articles, though. Sometimes no articles are needed in Spanish when they are needed in English. For example, no articles are needed when referring to profession or religion. In Spanish, I am a teacher translates as soy profesor. No article is needed, just the verb “to be” and the occupation.
There is no set rule for when an article is not needed. This has to be learned as the language is traversed.
Accent marks often present another problem to beginners learning Spanish. Learners often forget them or misplace them in their writing, but they are an important part of the language. Accent marks are used to show stress, but they are also used to separate homonyms. The following table provides examples of just a few of these homonyms.
| si | if | sí | yes |
| el | the | él | he |
| tu | your | tú | you |
| aun | even | aún | yet |
| mi | my | mí | me |
This is just a small sample of the homonyms in Spanish. Unfortunately, there is no easy rule; they simply have to be learned.
There are, however, general rules for the placement of accent marks. For one, they always go over a vowel. Vowels in Spanish are divided into strong and weak categories. “A,” “e,” and “o” fall into the strong category while “i” and “u” are weak. Strong vowels are always considered separate syllables when they fall next to each other in a word. Any other combination of vowels, like one strong and one weak or two weak vowels together, is considered one syllable. For example, “ai” in the word baila (dance) is pronounced as one syllable, but “oe” in poema (poem) is pronounced as two.
Accent marks come in when this rule is broken. País (country) pairs a strong and a weak vowel together but it is still two syllables with the stress falling on the weak vowel. Since it breaks the rule, an accent mark is needed to aid pronunciation. Any word that breaks the normal rules of stress in Spanish requires an accent mark to show the change.
The Spanish language is one of the most beautiful in the world and can be learned without a struggle. Articles and accent marks can cause confusion because they are not as straightforward as they seem, but beginners just have to commit to learning the rules and their exceptions.