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What is hiatus? »Its definition and meaning

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Hiatus is a word that comes from the Latin hiatus and that in its meaning has various applications in what corresponds to the grammatical world. This term is known as the meeting of two vowels that are part of different syllables. When there is a hiatus within a word, these letters can be separated into two syllables.

There are two types of hiatuses, the simple one, which is when two open vowels or two closed vowels that are the same, for example “chita”, and the accentual which is the joint between an open vowel and a closed vowel or a closed syllable with an accent and a open, an example of this would be “bakery”. It is important to point out that in Spanish there are strong vowels, they are A, E and O, while the weak ones are I and U. This is where some confusion occurs, since when two open or closed vowels join in the same syllable, What is known as diphthong is produced, however when speaking of hiatus, the sound of the syllable is divided into two.

There are several conditions that must exist for a hiatus to occur, some of them are:

  • The union of a weak vowel preferably stressed with a strong unstressed vowel.
  • The union of different open vowels.
  • The union of an unstressed strong vowel with a weak tonic vowel.
  • Union of two equal vowels.

To make the correct accentuation of the words, we want to remember that the first two cases must respect the rules of accentuation. For example: acute words are always stressed on the last syllable and have an accent when they end in N, S or by default vowel. In the same way, serious words are those that are stressed on the penultimate syllable and carry an accent as long as they do not end in those mentioned in the previous case. Likewise, there are the esdrújulas words that are stressed in the third to last syllable and always carry an accent.