Spanish Orthography

The Spanish language is written using the Spanish alphabet, which is the Latin alphabet with one additional letter, ene ? n? , for a total of 27 letters. [1]Although the letters ? k? and ? w? re part of the alphabet, they appear only in loanwords such as karate, kilo, waterpolo and wolframio ‘tungsten’. Each letter has a single official name according to the Real Academia Espanola’s new 2010 Common Orthography,[1] but in some regions alternative traditional names coexist as explained below. Spanish Alphabet| Letter| A| B| C1| D| E| F| G| H| I| Name| a| be, be larga| ce| de| e| efe| ge| hache| i| IPA| /a/| /b/| /k/, /? /2| /d/| /e/| /f/| /? /, /x/| silent3| /i/| Letter| J| K| L| M| N| N| O| P| Q| Name| jota| ka| ele| eme| ene| ene| o| pe| cu| IPA| /x/| /k/| /l/4| /m/| /n/| /? | /o/| /p/| /k/5| Letter| R6| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z| Name| erre| ese| te| u| ve, uve, ve corta| uve doble, ve doble, doble ve, doble u[2]| equis| i griega, ye| zeta| IPA| /? /, /r/| /s/| /t/| /u/| /b/| /? w/,/b/| /ks/, /x/, /s/| /? /, /i/| /? /2| ^1The sequence ? ch? represents the affricate /t? /.

The digraph was formerly treated as a single letter, called che.

^2 The phonemes /? / and /s/ have merged in many dialects; see ceceo. ^3 With the exception of some loanwords: hamster, hachis, hawaiano, which have /x/. ^4 When ? l? is written double (e. g. calle), it represents the palatal lateral /?  in a few dialects; but in most dialects—because of the historical merger called yeismo—it, like the letter ? y? , represents the phoneme /? /.

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^5 Used only in the digraph ? qu?. ^6 The digraph ? rr? , which only appears between vowels, represents the trill [r]. For details on Spanish pronunciation, see Spanish phonology and Wikipedia:IPA for Spanish. When acute accent and diaeresis marks are used on vowels ? a e i o u u? they are considered variants of the plain vowel letters, but ? n? is considered a separate letter from ? n?. This makes a difference when sorting alphabetically; ? n? appears in dictionaries after ? ?.For example, in a Spanish dictionary pinata comes after pinza. There are five digraphs: ? ch? (che / ce hache), ? ll? (elle / doble ele), ? rr? (doble erre), ? gu? (ge u) and ? qu? (cu u). [3] While che and elle were formerly considered separate letters,[1] in 1994 the tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies agreed to alphabetize ? ch? and ? ll? as ordinary pairs of letters in the dictionary by request of UNESCO and other international organizations. Thus ? ch? now comes between ? cg? and ? ci? , instead of being alphabetized between ? c? and ? d? as was formerly done. 4] Despite their former status as separate letters of the alphabet, ? ch? and ? ll? have always been correctly capitalized as two Latin letters. The word chillon in a text written in all caps is CHILLON, not *ChILlON, and if it is the first word of a sentence, it is written Chillon, not *CHillon. Sometimes one finds lifts (elevators) with buttons marked *LLamar, but this double capitalization has always been incorrect according toRAE rules. In Spanish text, the letters are ranked from most to least common ? E A O S R N I D L C T U M P B G V Y Q H F Z J N X W K? ,[5] and the vowels take around 45% of the text.Alternative names[edit] Be and uve[1] The letters ? b? and ? v? were originally simply known as be and ve. However, there is no longer any distinction between the sounds of these letters—their accepted names are be anduve;[6][7] in some regions, speakers may instead add something to the names to distinguish them. Some Mexicans and most Peruvians generally say be grande / ve chica (‘big B’ / ‘little V’);Argentines, Uruguayans and Chileans, be larga / ve corta (‘long B’ / ‘short V’). Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter; e. g. , be de burro / ve de vaca (‘b as in burro’ / ‘v as nvaca’); Colombians tend to say be grande for B and ve pequena for V. Regardless of these regional differences, all Spanish-speaking people recognize be as the official name of B. Erre[1] The digraph ? rr? is sometimes called doble erre or erre doble. It is sometimes suggested that the name of the letter r be ere when it is single, and erre when it is double, but the dictionary of the Real Academia Espanola defines the name of ? r? as erre. Ere is considered obsolete. [8] The name ere was used when referring specifically to the alveolar tap /? / and erre referring to thealveolar trill /r/.The two contrast between vowels, with the latter being represented with ? rr? , but the sounds are otherwise in complementary distribution so that a single ? r? may represent either. As a referent to the trill sound rather than the phoneme, erre can refer to a single or double ? r?. Doble uve[1] In America, it is sometimes called doble ve, ve doble, doble uve. Because of the English acculturation, in Colombia and Mexico the letter is usually called doble u (like English “double u”). In Spain it is usually called uve doble. I Because of its origin, it is occasionally known as i latina (‘Latin ? i? ‘) to distinguish it from i griega (‘Greek ? ? ‘). I Griega[1] The most common form in Spain is i griega, but it has been superseded by ye, more common in Latin America, in an effort to standardize on a single-word name as opposed to a two-worded one. Using ye as the only name for the letter is one of the newest proposed changes specified by the 2010 new common orthography. Its aim is to standardize on a single-word name for this letter. [1] Zeta[1] The variant ceta, which has the same pronunciation, used to be accepted by RAE, but now it is not. [9] In older Spanish, it was called zeda or ceda, which are the origin of the word cedilla, which is also used in English. ———————————————— Orthography[edit] Spanish orthography is such that the pronunciation of most words is unambiguous given their written form; the main exception is the letter ? x? , which usually represents /ks/ or /s/, but can also represent /x/ or /? /, especially in proper nouns from times of Old Spanish, as in Mexico or Pedro Ximenez (both /x/). These orthographic rules are similar to, but not the same as, those of otherRomance languages of the Iberian Peninsula, such as Portuguese, Catalan and Galician.The converse does not always hold, i. e. for a given pronunciation there may be multiple possible spellings. The main issues are: * the use of both ? b? and ? v? for /b/; * the use of both ? j? and ? g? for /x/ before ? e? and ? i? ; * the silent ? h? ; * for the speakers who have merged /? / and /? /, the various use of ? y? , ? ll? or ? hi? in different words; * the use of ? hu? , ? gu? or ? bu? before a vowel for /w/ (although many speakers distinguish some or all of these combinations) * for speakers not in central and northern Spain, the use ? /z? and ? s? for /s/; * the occasional use of accents to distinguish two words that sound the same. Consonants[edit] Consonants| Letter| Context| IPA| Examples| English approximation| b or v| word-initial after a pause, or after m or n| [b]| bestia; embuste; vaca; envidia| best| | elsewhere (i. e. after a vowel, even across a word boundary, or after any consonant other than m or n)| [? ]| bebe; obtuso; vivir; curva; mi bebe; mivaca[10]| between baby and bevy (like English v but using both lips instead of lips and teeth)| c| before e or i| [?  (central and northern Spain) or [s](elsewhere) [11]| cereal; encima| thing (central and northern Spain), cereal (elsewhere)| | elsewhere| [k]| casa; claro; vaca; escudo| scan (unaspirated, i. e. without the puff of air that accompanies English /k/ at the beginning of a word, e. g. in can)| ch| everywhere[12]| [t? ]| ocho; chicharo| church| d| word-initial after a pause, or after l or n| [d]| dedo; cuando; aldaba| dead| | elsewhere| [? ]| dadiva; arder; admirar; midedo; verdad[10]| this| f| everywhere| [f]| fase; cafe| face| g| before e or i| [x] r [h]| general| loch, or the ch in German Bach; a “strong” h-sound| | not before e or i, and either word-initial after a pause, or after n| [? ]| gato; grande; vengo| got| | not before e or i, and not in the above contexts| [? ]| trigo; amargo; signo; migato[10]| between a light go and ahold| gu| before a or o, and either word-initial after a pause, or after n; but only in some dialects| [? w]| guante; lengua| language| | before a or o, and not in the above contexts| [? w]| agua; averiguar[10]| somewhat like wall| | before e or i, and either word-initial after a pause, or after n| [? | guerra| got| | before e or i, and not in the above contexts| [? ]| sigue[10]| between a light go and ahold| gu| before e or i, and either word-initial after a pause, or after n; but only in some dialects| [? w]| pinguino| penguin| | before e or i, and not in the above contexts| [? w]| averigue; guero[10]| somewhat like wall| h| everywhere[13]| (silent[14])| hoy; hacer; prohibir;huevo; hielo| honor| hi| before a vowel| [? ]| hierba; hielo| you (but often more strongly pronounced, sometimes resembling g in genre)| hu| before a vowel| [w]| hueso; huevo| when (sometimes turn to /gw/ or /bw/)| j| everywhere| [x] r [h]| jamon; eje; reloj;[15]| loch, or the ch in German Bach; a “strong” h-sound| k| (only occurs in a few loanwords)| [k]| kilo| scan (unaspirated, i. e. without the puff of air that accompanies English /k/ at the beginning of a word, e. g. in can)| l| everywhere| [l]| lino; alhaja; principal| lean| ll| everywhere| [? ] in some dialects [? ] in some dialects| llave; pollo| somewhat like million (in some dialects, simplified to a strongly pronounced you resembling g in genre, both of which in some dialects are distinctly separate)| m| everywhere except word-finally| [m]| madre; comer; campo[16]| mother| | word-final| [n]| album| boon| | everywhere but before other consonants| [n]| nido; anillo; anhelo; sin| need| | before other consonants[16]| [m] [n] [? ] [? ]| convertir mundo enyesar cinco| jumbo under canyon sink| n| everywhere| [? ]| nandu; cabana[16]| roughly like canyon| p| everywhere| [p]| pozo; topo; esposa| spouse (unaspirated, see above for /k/)| qu| (usually only occurs before e or i)| [k]| quise| scan (unaspirated, i. e. without the puff of air that accompanies English /k/ at the beginning of a word, e. g. n can)| r| word-initial, morpheme-initial,[17] or after l, n or s| [r]| rumbo; honra; Israel| trilled r| | elsewhere| [? ]| caro; cabra; bravo; carta; amor| ladder in American English| rr| (only occurs between vowels)| [r]| carro| trilled r| s| before a voiced consonant (e. g. l, m, d)| [z]| isla; mismo; desde; deshuesar[18]| prison| | everywhere else| [s]| saco; casa; deshora; espita[18]| sack| sh| (in words from English)| [? ] or [t? ]| sherpa| shack| t| everywhere| [t]| tamiz; atomo| stand (unaspirated, see above for /k/)| tl| (mostly from Nahuatl)| [t? | tlapaleria; cenzontle; Popocatepetl| somewhat like cat-like| tz| (from loanwords)| [ts]| quetzal; Ertzaintza; abertzale; Patzcuaro| cats| w| in words of English origin| [w]| waterpolo| when (sometimes turn to /gw/ or /bw/)| | in words of German origin and in Visigothic names| [b]| wolframio; Wamba| best| x| between vowels, in most words| [ks]| exacto; taxi| taxi| | word-initially or before a consonant| [ks] or [s]| xenofobia; extremo[18]| sack| | in some words borrowed from Nahuatl, mostly place names| [x] or [h]| Mexico; Oaxaca| loch, or the ch in German Bach; a strong” h-sound| | in a few words from Basque, Catalan, etc. | [? ]| Xela| shade| y| as a vowel or semivowel| [i] or [j]| y, hoy| lee, boy| | as a consonant| [? ]| ya; yerba; ayuno[10]| you (but often more strongly pronounced, sometimes resembling g in genre)| z| (usually does not occur before e or i)| [? ] (central and northern Spain) or [s](elsewhere)[11]| zorro; paz| thing (central and northern Spain), cereal (elsewhere)| Vowels[edit] Vowels| Letter| IPA| Examples| English approximation| a| [a]| azahar| spa| e| [e]| vehemente| bet| i| [i]| dimitir; mio;| see| | | y| | o| [o]| boscoso| between coat (American more than British) and caught| u| [u]| cucurucho; duo| food| | Semivowels[19]| IPA| Spelling| Examples| English approximation| [j]| i before a vowel| aliada; cielo; amplio; ciudad| you| [w]| u before a vowel (but silent in qu, also gu before an e or i)| cuadro; fuego; Huila[20] arduo| wine| Special and modified letters[edit] Use of different letters for the same sound| sound| before ? e/i? | elsewhere| /? / or /s/| ? c? or ? z? (in some loanwords) or ? s? | ? z? or ? s? | /k/| ? qu? or ? k? (in some loanwords)| ? c? or ? ? (in some loanwords)| /kw/| ? cu? | /x/| ? g? or ? j? or ? x? (in Mexico)| ? j? or ? x? (in Mexico)| /? /| ? gu? | ? g? | /? w/| ? gu? | ? gu? | The vowels can be marked with an acute accent (? a, e, i, o, u? ) for two purposes: to mark stress if it does not follow the most common pattern, or to differentiate words that are otherwise spelled identically (called the tilde diacritica in Spanish). A silent ? u? is used between ? g? and ? e? or ? i? to indicate a hard ? g? pronunciation, so that ? gue? represents /? e/ and ? gui? represents /? i/. The letter ? u? (? u? ith diaeresis,) is used in this context to indicate that the ? u? is not silent, e. g. pinguino /pin? gwino/. The diaeresis may occur also in Spanish poetry, occasionally, over either vowel of a diphthong, to indicate an irregular disyllabic pronunciation required by the meter (viuda, to be pronounced as three syllables). This is analogous to the use of ? i? innaive in English. Also a silent ? u? always follows a ? q? when followed by ? e? or ? i? , as in queso, quimica, but there is no case for the combination *? qu?. There are no native words in Spanish with the combination ? ua? nor ? quo?. When they appear, usually from Latin idioms such as statu quo, the ? u? is always pronounced, so ? u? is never needed after ? q?. Prior to the introduction of the 2010 Common Orthography words such as cuorum (‘quorum’), cuasar (‘quasar’) or Catar (‘Qatar’) were spelled with ? q? , however this is no longer so. Stress and accentuation[edit] Written Spanish unequivocally marks stress through a series of orthographic rules. The default stress is on the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable on words that end in a vowel, ? n? or ? s? nd on the final syllable when the word ends in any consonant other than ? n? or ? s?. Words that do not follow the default stress have an acute accent over the stressed vowel. Unlike Portuguese or Catalan, Spanish rules count most syllables in rising diphthongs, not vowels, to assign written accents. A syllable is of the form XaXX, where X represents a consonant, permissible consonant cluster, or no sound at all, and a represents a vowel, diphthong, or triphthong. A diphthong is any sequence of an unstressed high vowel (? i? or ? u? ) with another vowel (as in gracias or nautico).And a triphthong is any combination of three vowels beginning and ending with unstressed high vowels (as in cambiais or buey). Hence Spanish writes familia (no accent), while Portuguese and Catalan both put an accent mark on familia (all three languages stress the first ? i? ). The letter ? h? is not considered an interruption between vowels (so thatahumar is considered to have two syllables: ahu-mar). An accent over the high vowel (? i? or ? u? ) of a vowel sequence prevents it from being a diphthong (i. e. , it signals a hiatus): for example, tia and pais have two syllables each.A word with final stress is called oxytone (or aguda in traditional Spanish grammar texts); a word with penultimate stress is called paroxytone (llana or grave); a word with antepenultimate stress (stress on the third-to-last syllable) is called proparoxytone (esdrujula). A word with preantepenultimate stress (on the fourth last syllable) or earlier does not have a common linguistic term in English, but in Spanish receives the name sobresdrujula. (Spanish words can be stressed only on one of the last three syllables, except in the case of a verb form with enclitic pronouns, such asponiendoselo. All proparoxytones and sobresdrujulas have a written accent mark. Adjectives spelled with a written accent (such as facil, geografico, cortes) keep the written accent when they are made into adverbs with the -mente ending (thus facilmente, geograficamente,cortesmente), and do not gain any if they do not have one (thus libremente from libre). In the pronunciation of these adverbs — as with all adverbs in -mente — primary stress is on the ending, on the penultimate syllable. The original stress of the adjective — whether marked, as in facilmente, or not marked, as in libremente — may be manifested as a secondary stress in the adverb.Accentuation of capital letters[edit] Further information: es:Acentuacion de las mayusculas The Real Academia Espanola indicates that accents should still be written on capitals. [21] Differential accents[edit] Blackboard used in a university classroom showsstudents’ efforts at placing ? u? and acute accent diacriticused in Spanish orthography. In a number of cases, homonyms are distinguished with written accents on the stressed (or only) syllable: for example, te (informal object case of ‘you’) vs. te (‘tea’); se (third person reflexive) vs. e (‘I know’ or imperative ‘be’); tu (informal ‘your’) vs. tu (informal subject case of ‘you’). When relative and interrogative pronouns have the same letters (as is often the case), the interrogative pronoun is accented and the relative pronoun is not: ? A donde vas? ‘Where are you going? ‘ A donde no puedas encontrarme. ‘Where you cannot find me. ‘ The use of o is poetic for the vocative: ? O senor! The use of ? o? for the word o (meaning ‘or’) is a hypercorrection. Up until 2010, ? o? was used when applied to numbers: 7 o 9 (‘7 or 9’), to avoid possible confusion with the digit 0.The tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies deemed the use of an accent unnecessary, as typewriting eliminates possible confusion due to the different shapes of ? 0? (zero) and ? o? (the letter). [1] These diacritics are often called acentos diacriticos or tildes diacriticas in traditional Spanish grammar. Capitalization[edit] Capitalization in Spanish is sparse compared to English. In general, only personal and place names, some abbreviations (e. g. Sr. Lopez, but senor Lopez), the first word (only) in the title of a book, movie, song, etc. and the first word in a sentence are capitalized, as are names of companies, government bodies, etc. Names of nationalities or languages are not capitalized, nor (in standard style) are days of the week and months of the year. [22] Older conventions[edit] In Old Spanish, ? x? was used to represent the voiceless palatal sound /? / (as in dixo ‘he/she said’), while ? j? represented the voiced palatal /? / (as in fijo ‘son’). With the changes of sibilants in the 16th century, the two sounds merged as /? / (later to become velar /x/), and the letter ? j? as chosen for the single resulting phoneme. When Cervantes wrote Don Quixote he spelled the name in the old way (and English preserves the ? x? ), but modern editions in Spanish spell it with ? j?. For the use of ? x? in Mexico — and in the name Mexico itself — see below. The letter ? c? (c-cedilla) — which was first used in Old Spanish — is now obsolete in Spanish, having merged with ? z? in a process similar to that of ? x? and ? j?. Old Spanish coracon,cabeca, fuerca became modern corazon, cabeza, fuerza. Words formerly spelled with ? ze? or ? zi? such as catorze, dezir, and vezino) are now written with ? ce? and ? ci? (catorce, decir, vecino, respectively). The sequences ? ze? and ? zi? do not occur in modern Spanish except some loanwords: zeugma, zigurat; some borrowed words have double spellings: zinc/cinc. [23] The old spellings with ? x? , ? c? , ? ze? , and ? zi? remained in use through the fifteenth century. They were mostly replaced by ? j? , ? z? , ? ce? , and ? ci? , respectively around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; since the eighteenth century, only the newer forms have been used. 24] The first edition of Don Quixote (1605), however, used the conservative spellings. Old Spanish used to distinguish /s/ and /z/ between vowels, and it distinguished them by using ? ss? for the former and ? s? for the latter, e. g. osso (‘bear’) and oso (‘I dare to’). Words spelled in modern Spanish with ? cua? (e. g. cuando, cuatro, etc. ) were written with ? qua? up until around 1815. [25] In the second half of the 18th century, most double consonants were simplified (e. g. grammatica > gramatica, addicion > adicion)—but the ? m? of a prefix before the ? m? of a root was differentiated to ? ? (e. g. “commover ; conmover”). And the Graeco-Latin digraphs ? ch? , ? ph? , ? (r)rh? and ? th? were reduced to ? c? , ? f? , ? (r)r? and ? t? , respectively (e. g. christiano >cristiano, triumpho > triunfo, myrrha > mirra, theatro > teatro). The use of accent marks in publishing varies with different historical periods, due mainly to reforms promulgated by the Spanish Royal Academy. For example, many of the words that are today standardly written with an accent mark appeared more often without it up until around 1880. These include words with final stress ending in -n (e. . capitan, tambien, jardin, accion, comun — but not future-tense verb forms like seran, tendran);[26][27] verbs in the imperfect tense (e. g. tenia, vivian);[28] the possessives mio and mia;[29] and the word dia. [30] Meanwhile, one-letter words other than the conjunction y — namely the preposition a and the conjunctions e (the form of y before an [i] sound), o, and u (form of o before [o]) — are generally written with accent marks from the mid-1700s to about 1910. [31][32] The accent-marked infinitive oir begins to outnumber the unaccented form around 1920. 33] Monosyllabic preterit verb forms such as dio and fue were usually written with accent marks before the 1950s. [34] The names of numbers in the upper teens and the twenties were originally written as three words (e. g. diez y seis, veinte y nueve), but nowadays they have come to be spelled predominantly as a single word (e. g. dieciseis, veintinueve). For the numbers from 21 to 29, the “fused” forms emerged over the second half of the 19th century. [35] For those from 16 to 19, the one-word forms took the lead in the 1940s. [36] Fusing of number-names above 30 (e. . treintaicinco, cuarentaiocho)[37] is rare. Reform proposals[edit] See also: Bello orthography In spite of the regular orthography of Spanish (especially when compared to English), there have been several initiatives to reform its spelling: Andres Bello succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the standard set by the Real Academia Espanola. [38] Another initiative, the Ortografia Fonetika Rasional Ispanoamerikana, remained a curiosity. Juan Ramon Jimenez proposed changing ? ge? and ? gi? to ? je? and ? i? , but this is only applied in editions of his works or those of his wife, Zenobia Camprubi. Gabriel Garcia Marquez raised the issue of reform during a congress at Zacatecas, most notoriously advocating for the suppression of ? h? , which is mute in Spanish, but, despite his prestige, no serious changes were adopted. The Academies, however, from time to time have made minor changes, such as allowing este instead of este (‘this one’), when there is no possible confusion. Mexican Spanish convention is to spell certain indigenous words with ? x? rather than the ? ? that would be the standard spelling in Spanish. This is generally due to the origin of the word (or the present pronunciation) containing the voiceless postalveolar fricative /? / sound or another sibilant that is not used in modern standard Spanish. The most noticeable word with this feature is Mexico(see Toponymy of Mexico). The Real Academia Espanola recommends this spelling. [39] (The North American Spanish colloquial term chicano is shortened from mechicano, which uses /t? / in place of the /? / of contra-Madridian/rural Mexican Spanish /me? i? kano/).