Syllables

1. In Spanish, unlike English, we can simply speak out a word from its orthography (spelling), please refer to the alphabet in "Introduction".
2. A Spanish syllable structure: C1C2S1VS2C3C4 where C represent consonants, S semivowels and V vowels; text in red is the onset, green the nucleus, blue the Coda.
3. C1 and C3 can be any consonants.
4. C2 must follow a C1 which is either one of /p, t, k, b, d, g, f/
5. C4 must be /s/.
6. Assigment of consonant to onset or coda? We first look at the right of a consonant and assign a consonant to the vowel right after it. In all other cases, the consonant is then assigned to the vowel on its left to form a syllable.
7. Example: the word "mesas", "s" in the middle comes together with "a", not "e" and the syllables are me-sas.
8. Stress assignment in a multip-syllable word: (1) Stress on the syllable with a remarked acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú), if any. (2) Stress on the last syllable if a word ends in /r, l, d, z, j/. (3) In all other cases, stress on the one before the last syllable.
9. Vowels are classified into strong vowels (a, e, o) and weak vowels, or semi-vowels (i, u).
10. They can be combined to form a nucleus: most often diphthongs and triphthongs are rare.
11. However, they are not combined to form a nucleus if a semi-vowel is remarked as the acute accent. They are 2 separate syllables instead.
12. Example of 11: co-mí-a.

References:

1. Web article "Spanish phonoogy" on Wikipedia.
2. 何仕凡, Español Básico, 世界圖書出版公司 2003