Syllable counting

In Spanish, as well as in English, words are divided into syllables. Syllable counting is very essential in the Spanish language because accent rules are based in the counting of these syllables. There are a few rules that one must remember when counting syllables:

1. Syllable counting starts with the last syllable in the word. That is, after you break the word into syllables, you start counting from the end of the word to the beginning of the word.

Chi-co	ta-ma-les	u - ni - ver - si - dad
2 - 1	3 - 2 - 1	5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1

2. The order in which the syllables are broken might be affected by:

a) Diphthongs(diptongos). Diphthongs are formed by joining sounds because a strong vowel [a, e ,o] is next to a weaker vowel[i, u], or diphthongs are formed by combining two weak vowels.

bue - no

cui-da-do