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Spanish orthography is the writing system for the Spanish language. It is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to other language orthographies using the Latin alphabet, having a consistent mapping of grapheme to phoneme.

Alphabet

Spanish language
Don Quixote, master work in Spanish literature.
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Letters and letter names

The Spanish language is written using the Spanish alphabet, which is the Latin alphabet with three additional letters: che (‹ch›), elle (‹ll›) and eñe (‹ñ›). Although the letters ‹k› and ‹w› are part of the alphabet, they appear mostly in loanwords such as karate, kilo and walkman.

For details on Spanish pronunciation, see Spanish phonology and Wikipedia:IPA for Spanish.

For vowels, the acute accent and diaeresis marks are used (‹á, é, í, ó, ú› and ‹ü›), but they are considered variants of the plain vowel letters, but ‹ñ› is considered a separate letter from ‹n›, so it appears in dictionaries after ‹n›. Therefore, for example, in a Spanish dictionary piñata comes after pinza.

There are three digraphs: ‹ch› (che), ‹ll› (elle / doble ele) and ‹rr› (doble erre).^[1] Although che and elle are considered separate letters, 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, for example ‹ch› now comes between ‹ce› and ‹ci›, instead of being alphabetized between ‹c› and ‹d› as was formerly done.^[2]

Being regarded as separate letters do not affect capitalization; the word chillón in a text written in all caps is ‹CHILLÓN›, not *‹ChILLÓN›, and if it is the first word of a sentence, it is written ‹Chillón›, not *‹CHillón›. Sometimes one finds lifts with buttons marked *LLamar, but this double capitalization has always been incorrect according to RAE rules.

According to the letter frequency the order beginning from most common is ‹E A O S R N I D L C T U M P B G V Y Q H F Z J Ñ X W K› ^[3] the vowels take around the 45% of the text.

Alternative names

• The letters ‹b› and ‹v› were originally simply known as be and ve. However, as Spanish no longer distinguishes between the sounds of these letters, they are more commonly called be and uve;^[4][5] depending on regions, speakers may instead add something to the names to tell them apart. Some Mexicans and most Peruvians often say be grande / ve chica ('big B' / 'little V'); Argentinians and Chileans, be larga / ve corta ('long B' / 'short V'); Catalans, be alta / ve baja ('tall B' / 'short V'). Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter; e.g., be de burro / ve de vaca ('burro's B' / 'vaca's V'). Regardless of these regional names, all Spanish-speaking people recognize be as the official name of B. The name uve for V is particularly used in Spain, although it isn't known in some Latin American countries.

• 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 Española defines the name of ‹r› as erre or ere. The name ere is used when referring specifically to the alveolar tap /ɾ/ and erre referring to the alveolar trill /r/. The two contrast between vowels, with the latter being represented with ‹rr›, but the sounds are otherwise in complimentary 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›.

• ‹w› is named uve doble as v is named uve.^[6] In America, it is sometimes called doble ve, ve doble, doble uve. Because of the English aculturation in Mexico is usually called doble u (like English "double u").

• ‹i› is occasionally known as i latina ('Latin ‹i›') to distinguish it from ‹y›, which is called i griega ('Greek ‹y›'). ‹y› is also known as ye.

• ‹z› is usually called zeta or ceta (both pronounced the same), or occasionally zeda or ceda (again, both pronounced the same).

Pronunciation of ‹c› and ‹z›

While ‹c› (before front vowels ‹e i›) and ‹z› represent a voiceless dental fricative (like the ‹th› in English thin) in Standard Spanish, not all dialects have this sound. In parts of Andalusia, the Canary Islands, and most American dialects, they represent /s/, just as ‹s› does, so that casa and caza are pronounced the same. See Ceceo for a detailed discussion.

Orthography

Spanish orthography is such that every speaker can figure out the pronunciation of a word from its written form. These rules are similar to, but not the same as, those of other peninsular languages, such as Portuguese, Catalan and Galician.

A number of the writing system's rules lead to potential homophony. These include the silent ‹h›, the lack of distinction between ‹b› and ‹v›, or ‹c› and ‹z› before ‹e i›, as well as some dialectal mergers such as that between ‹y› and ‹ll›, and between ‹c z› and ‹s›. In this way, a number of spellings could represent the same pronunciation. Nevertheless, the orthography is far more transparent than, for example, English orthography.

Special and modified letters

The vowels can be marked with an acute accent (‹á, é, í, ó, ú›) for two purposes: to mark stress if it does not follow the normal pattern, or to differentiate otherwise equally spelled words (this is the true diacritic usage).

An otherwise silent ‹u› is used between ‹g› and ‹e i› to indicate a hard ‹g› pronunciation so that ‹gue› represents /ge/ and ‹gui› represents /gi/. ‹ü› (‹u› with diaeresis,) is used in this context indicate that the ‹u› is not silent. The diaeresis may occur also in Spanish poetry, occasionally, over the first vowel of a diphthong, to indicate an irregular disyllabic pronunciation required by the meter (viüda, to be pronounced as three syllables). This is analogous to the use of ‹ï› in naïve in English.

Stress and accentuation

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› and 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.

Note that unlike Portuguese or Catalan, Spanish rules count syllables, not vowels, to assign written accents. A syllable is of the form XaXX, where X represents a consonant, permissible consonant blend, or no sound at all and a represents a vowel, diphthong, or triphthong. Diphthongs and triphthongs are any combination of two and three vowels, respectively. Hence, Spanish writes familia and Portuguese and Catalan have família, while all stress the first ‹i›. ‹h› is not considered an interruption between vowels.

An accent over the close vowel (‹i› or ‹u›) of a diphthong breaks up the diphthong (i.e., it signals a hiatus): for example, tía, and país 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 last syllable) is called proparoxytone (esdrújula). 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 sobresdrújula. All proparoxtyones and sobresdrújulas have written accent marks.

Differential accents

Blackboard used in a university classroom shows students' efforts at placing ‹ü› and acute accent diacritic used 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. té ('tea'); se (third person reflexive) vs. sé ('I know' or imperative 'be'); tu (informal 'your') vs. tú (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:

¿Adónde vas? 'Where are you going?'

Adonde no puedas encontrarme. 'Where you cannot find me.'

The use of ó is poetic for the vocative: ¡Ó señor! The use of ‹ó› for the word o (meaning 'or') is a hypercorrection, though ‹ó› is used when applied to numbers: 7 ó 9 ('7 or 9'), to avoid possible confusion with the digit 0.

These diacritics are often called acentos diacríticos or tildes diacríticas in traditional Spanish grammar.

Capitalization

Capitalization in Spanish is sparse compared to English. In general, only personal and place names, the first word in a title and some abbreviations are capitalized.^[7]

Older conventions

At one time, ‹x› was commonly used to represent both /x/ and /ʃ/, most notably in the name Don Quixote. This usage is now obsolete, but see below on a Mexican variant.

The letter ‹ç›, used at one time, has been replaced with ‹z› in modern Spanish.

Reform proposals

In spite of the regular orthography of Spanish (especially when compared to English), there have been several initiatives to reform its spelling: Andrés Bello succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the standard set by the Real Academia Española.^[8] Another initiative, the Ortografia Fonetika Rasional Ispanoamerikana, remained a curiosity. Juan Ramón Jiménez proposed changing ‹ge› and ‹gi› to ‹je› and ‹ji›, but this is only applied in editions of his works or those of his wife, Zenobia Camprubí. Gabriel García Márquez 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 éste ('this one'), when there is no possible confusion.

Mexican Spanish convention is to spell certain indigenous words with ‹x› rather than the ‹j› 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 /ʃ/ sound or another sibilant that is not used in modern standard Spanish. The most noticeable word with this feature is México (see Toponymy of Mexico). The Real Academia Española recommends this spelling.^[9] (The North American Spanish colloquial term chicano is shortened from mechicano, which uses /tʃ/ in place of the /ʃ/ of contra-Madridian/rural Mexican Spanish /meʃikano/.)

See also

• Inverted question and exclamation marks

References

Bibliography

• Penny, Ralph (2002). A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521011841. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZjcrhyQlFa0C&dq=%22history+of+the+spanish+language%22+penny&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0. 

External links

• A la nación española: Sobre reformas ortográficas, Mariano Cubí i Soler, Imprenta de Miguel i Jaime Gaspar, Barcelona, 1852 (Biblioteca Digital Hispánica).
• Collation in Spanish
• Ortografía de la lengua española published by the Real Academia Española (RAE).
• Spanish Alphabet Pronunciation — simplified for beginners to Spanish letter pronunciation.
• Spanish/Pronunciation — Wikibook with extensive coverage of the Spanish letter pronunciation.