Accents are used in the Spanish language to visually indicate that a particular letter in a word needs to be emphasised when pronounced. In other words, there's a certain way all Spanish words should be pronounced based on the letters contained within them and accents are there to indicate that the pronunciation of that word differs from the rule, and the accented letter is the one you should be emphasising instead of what would otherwise be emphasised. You really don't need to know Spanish grammar rules for the sake of roleplaying in this faction but plenty of people don't know what the point of accents are and it can be confusing, and will generally result in the incorrect placement of accents.
It's a pain in the ass to try to remember which words contain accents and where they are but there's basic commonly used words that contain accents which you should be aware of and should spell correctly if grammar is important to you (omitting accents is technically grammatically incorrect, and the omission of an accent where one should be can actually result in an entirely different word from what you intended). Some examples are:
- Órale
- Sureño (if you don't use accents for any other words, you should at least use it for this word. Spelling it without the accent actually results in the sound "sureyno" rather than "surenyo", and it also isn't a word.)
- Liña
Pruno does
not contain an accent. It's a generic prison slang word, not exclusive to Sureños. Don't type pruño because you're actually typing "prunyo".
It's debatable whether "ese" should contain an accent or not because it's a slang word. It actually can mean "that one" in proper Spanish and in that sense it used to be spelled with an accent but it isn't anymore. For most people "ese" is actually just the way you spell and pronounce the Spanish version of the letter 'S', and I would wager this is where Sureños adapted the word from to refer to each other. In that instance, "ese" definitely does not contain an accent. Therefore, I don't believe you should spell it with one.
Here is a list of alt codes for Spanish accented letters, it's useful to copy these down on a sticky note or something and get in the habit of using them:
á = Alt + 0225.
é = Alt + 0233.
í = Alt + 0237.
ó = Alt + 0243.
ú = Alt + 0250.
ñ = Alt + 0241.
ú = Alt + 0250.
ü = Alt + 0252.
Á = Alt + 0193.
É = Alt + 0201.
Í = Alt + 0205.
Ó = Alt + 0211.
Ñ = Alt + 165.
Ú = Alt + 0218.
Ü = Alt + 0220.
You shouldn't need most of those because you're not actually typing Spanish sentences out to each other. However, it's useful to use accents for common phrases. Alt + 0241 is probably the most useful.
While we're on the subject of grammar, "manquina/manqina" isn't a word. The correct term is "maquina" ("machine"). If you think about it in the sense of being quite similar to "machine", it's easy to remember.
