Stress and Accent Marks in Filipino Words

When you listen to Filipino words, you should pay attention not only to the sounds of each letter, but also to where the stress or emphasis lies in a word.

This is an essential part of learning the Filipino language for two reasons:

1.) Changing where the stress is in a word will sometimes change the meaning of the word.

2.) By putting the stress on the wrong syllable, you make it a lot harder for native Filipino speakers to understand what you're saying.



Accent marks written over vowels are used to indicate the syllable that is stressed in each Filipino word, so you can learn how to say the a properly. The rest of this page will explain how to interpret those accent marks correctly.

The accent mark system explained here is the official accenting system of the Tagalog/Filipino language for educational materials. Other resources may use a different accent mark systems, but we feel the official system is the best and most practical for students to learn.

This website also underlines stressed vowels to make things especially clear, even though this is not part of the standard accent mark system.

Please note that accent marks are not used most in non-educational Filipino written materials. If you pick up a newspaper or a novel written in Filipino, for example, you won't see these accent marks. Language students need accent marks, but fluent Filipino speakers do not.

As a side note: you really shouldn't try to learn the Filipino language from educational materials that don't include accent/stress marks! If you do, you'll end up learning how to pronounce words incorrectly, and you'll have to endure the unpleasant task of unlearning and relearning all the words you thought you once knew.



According to standard Filipino accent mark rules, accent marks are not written if the 2nd-to-the-last syllable is the one that is stressed. This is referred to as the Default Stress Syllable. The marks are omitted in this case because the 2nd-to-the-last syllable is the one that is most commonly stressed, and by leaving the mark off in those cases it simplifies the writing of stress marks significantly. So, if we talk about the "Default Stress", we're talking about stressing the 2nd-to-the-last syllable; and in that case, the accent mark is usually omitted / not written.




This accent mark is known as a pahilís and is a slanted accent mark that leans up and to the right. It is written above vowels, and indicates that the syllable under the mark should be stressed.

If you don't see a pahilís mark on a word on this web site, you should assume that the "Default Stress Syllable" is the one that is stressed (the 2nd-to-last syllable).


This accent mark is known as a paiwà and is a slanted accent mark that leans down and to the right.

This mark signifies two things: 1.) That the vowel the accent mark is over should not be stressed but that it should be "cut short." This is known as a "stop" (or "glottal stop"). It's the same sound you make between syllables in English when you say "uh-oh". This is really best understood by listening to example audio clips included below. 2.) This accent mark also means the vowel immediately before the paiwa mark is the stressed syllable.


The pakupyâ stress mark indicates that the last syllable of a word must both be stressed and have a stop.



There are many Filipino words that have the same spellings, but have different meanings depending on where the stress is located.