Spanish 1: Qué significa

Community-Created Courses Spanish (Castilian/Spain)
1

A question about pronunciation of significa in “Qué significa”.

The word has no accents, so logically stress is on the fi syllable.

However in the course media, stress is distinctly on the ni syllable (third to last). This is despite having no accent.

Additionally, searching google and spanishdict finds media with the ni stress as above. However it also produces discussions noting the ni stress is a mispronunciation by many Spaniards, related to assimilation of similar sounding words with an accent on the third-to-last syllable (e.g. magnífica).

So how should I pronounce “significa”?

2

You are right, the stress should be on the fi syllable.
Here is upto 4 cases of people naturally saying significa with the stress on the fi syllable

Though I guess this one one of those that if enough people are mispronouncing it you probably wouldn’t be corrected if you pronounced the stress incorrectly.