The volume of queries in digital dictionaries about how to write “difficult”, with or without accents, is surprising. The general rules of accentuation are rules of easy application and essential to indicate the pronunciation of each word, marking the stressed syllable of the same. Although sometimes the tilde is used to differentiate terms that are spelled the same (public, public or published), this is not the case of the adjective at hand. There is only one correct option.
Without going into unnecessary detours, difficult is written with a tilde in the second “i”. “Difficult”, without accentuation, is a term that is not included in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and therefore does not exist. Writing “difficult” is a blunder. Let’s see step by step why it is accentuated.
We begin by separating the word into syllables: dí-fí-cil. This adjective is made up of three syllables, with the tonic syllable (the one that is pronounced with greater intensity) falling on the penultimate syllable. That is, we are faced with a flat word. Here is a brief review of basic spelling rules:
The vowel of the tonic syllable is marked by an orthographic sign, the tilde or graphic accent, provided that:
Difficult is a plain word ending in “l”, which is why it is written with a graphic accent. To try not to forget the rule, you can remember other flame words: “exam” does not have a tilde because it ends in “-n”; “steppe” does not have it either because it ends in a vowel, like “crisis”, since it ends in “-s”.
Although knowing the spelling rules is the best way to avoid making mistakes when writing, another option in case doubts arise about how a word is written is to look for alternatives. In the case of the adjective “difficult”, we can choose synonyms such as “complicated”, “complex”, “convoluted” or “arduous”.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
