This study aims to propose a new instruction method about the Spanish rhythm structure. The Korean students of Spanish are very inexperienced in realizing the proper rhythm structure of the language, because in Korean there is not a similar accentual system. To develop a most interesting and effective method for the linguistic rhythm practice, it is necessary that the teachers pay attention firstly to the Spanish suprasegmental phonetic system and secondly to the correlation between the linguistic system and the music system. The fundamental concepts of musical structure involve such factors as rhythmic and pitch organization, dynamic and timbre differentiation, etc. Among the three major elements of the music ― melody, rhythm and harmony ― we have to pay a special attention to the first two, because the two elements are very closely related with the accent position of the words of song, and hereby we describe in detail about the organization of metrical and structural accents as well as their application to the instructional method.

Won - pil Kim. 2002. Urug uáy or Urú g uay ? S tud ies in M od e rn Grammar 27, 179 - 196 . While in English the letter y can operate not only as a semi- vowel or a semi- consonant - day, stay, y es, y oung - but as a whole vowel - my, cry, study, every, p sy chology - , in Spanish it functions, in some cases, as a semi- consonant at the initial position of a syllable or a word - yo, leyó, leyeron, leyendo- , and in others as a fricative palatal consonant at the same position - y eg ua, cónyug e- . But in the case that the y is positoned after a vowel, as in the toponym 'Uruguay ' , it is pronounced in Spanish as [urugwái]. Therefore we are likely to define it as a consonant, because the Real Academia Española determines it as oxytone, when a word ends in a consonant except n and s . But this is not acceptable because the y is not allowed as a fricative consonant after a vowel. When treating the last syllable as a set of vowels, that is, a triphthong, it is not acceptable either, due to the discrepancy with the Spanish accent rules. Therefore we now suppose that the final vowel y constitutes a separate vowel as the result of 'hiatus ' , regarding that there exists, in Italian and Portuguese, a general tendency of syllabification of the high and weak vowel / i/ , as in 'Uruguai' , and that 'Uruguay ' is a loanword from the Indian language where the vowel y formed a sememe ('river ' ). In addition to this ethymological aspect we must take account of the psychological aspect . Who are very accustomed to Spanish tend to accommodate to the paroxytone, the general tendency of Spanish, especially for the words that are composed of any morphological and semantical elements at the word- final position, as in habláis, estudiáis .