Spanish language
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Spanish orthography is one of the most phonemic among those that are written with the Latin alphabet. For detailed information on the pronunciation not found here, see also Spanish phonology. A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Alphabet

Letters and letter names

The Spanish language is written using the Latin alphabet, along with a few special characters: the vowels with an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú), the vowel u with diaeresis (ü), and ñ. The letters k and w appear mostly in loanwords (such as karate, kilo or walkman). This article is about the international language known as Spanish. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The acute accent (   ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... In linguistics, a, diaeresis, or dieresis (AE) (from Greek (diaerein), to divide) is the modification of a syllable by distinctly pronouncing one of its vowels. ...

The following letter names appear in preference order for speaking in Spanish from Spain (this means that letter y will be called i griega rather than ye).

See International Phonetic Alphabet for the symbols used to represent pronunciation. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ...

The vowels with accents and diaeresis are considered variants of the plain vowel letters, but ñ is considered a letter in its own right, and so it appears in dictionaries after n. Therefore, for example, in a Spanish dictionary piñata comes after pinza.

The digraphs ch and ll have traditionally also been treated as letters of the alphabet, since 1803.^[1] However, 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, while keeping them as distinct letters for the alphabet and other purposes. Thus for example ch now comes between ce and ci, instead of being alphabetized between c and d as formerly.^[2] Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Ch is a digraph in the Roman alphabet. ... LL may stand for: LL is the IATA code for Lineas Aeras Allegro airline LL is the production code for the Doctor Who serial The Evil of the Daleks. ... The Association of Spanish Language Academies (Spanish: ) was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish speaking world. ... Alphabetical redirects here. ... UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established in 1945. ...

Their being regarded as separate letters was not supposed to affect capitalization. Therefore, the word chillón in a text written in all caps should be CHILLÓN and 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. A set of lifts in the lower level of a London Underground station. ... The Real Academia Española (Spanish for Royal Spanish Academy, RAE) is the institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. ...

The two digraphs have specific names, che and elle, which are habitually used in spelling. For example, chillón is spelt out as che, i, elle, o con acento, ene. Some Spanish speakers spell ch as ce hache, while ll is sometimes spelled out as doble ele.

Alternative names

• The letters b and v were originally simply known as be and ve. However, as Spanish doesn't distinguish between these sounds, it is necessary to add something to the names to tell them apart. Mexicans often say be grande / ve chica ("big B" / "little V"); Argentinians, be larga / ve corta ("long B" / "short V"); Catalans, be alta / ve baja ("tall B" / "short V"); other Spaniards and Puerto Ricans, be / uve. Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter; e.g., be de burro / ve de vaca. Some people even call them be labial and ve labiodental (dentilabial), not realizing that if this were true, there would be no need for such names.

• 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 the letter r as erre or ere. The name ere is used when referring specifically to the alveolar tap realization /ɾ/ represented by a single r in pero or trampa, as opposed to the name erre referring to the alveolar trill realization /r/ represented by a single r in rata or by a double rr in perro. Thus, erre can refer to the letter in either quality and either single or double in spelling, but ere only to the realization as a tap which is always spelled with a single r.

• The letter w can be doble ve, ve doble, doble u, or uve doble.

• The letter i is occasionally known as i latina ("Latin i") to distinguish it from y, which is known as i griega ("Greek i"). The letter y is also known as ye.

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

For other uses, see Argentina (disambiguation). ... Anthem: Capital Barcelona Official language(s) Catalan,Spanish and Aranese. ... RR stands for: Race Replica Rachael Ray, Award-winning US television chef, host and author Railroad Randy Rhoads Rational Recovery Regional Railways, a former sector of British Rail Repurchase agreement rate (= repo rate; as in the Reuters Instrument Code US10YT=RR) Request-reply, a synchronous messaging model commonly used in... The Real Academia Española (Spanish for Royal Spanish Academy, RAE) is the institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. ... The alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Pronunciation of c and z

Further information: Spanish dialects and varieties

The pronunciation of the letters c (before e or i) and z varies. Generally speaking, in central and northern Spain, c ['θe] and z ['θe.ta] are clearly distinguished from s ['e.se]. In Spanish speaking regions of North and South America, and in the southern part of Spain, c and z are pronounced identically to s. The names of the letters are thus pronounced ['se], ['se.ta], and [.e.se]. A minority of speakers pronounce all three letters as [θ]; see Ceceo for a detailed discussion. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Ceceo is a phenomenon in the Spanish language whereby the voiceless interdental fricative (International Phonetic Alphabet , the th in think) is used in place of the voiceless dental fricative . ...

Orthography

Spanish orthography is such that every speaker can guess the pronunciation (adapted for accent) from the written form. These rules are similar to, but not the same as, those of other peninsular languages, such as Portuguese, Catalan and Galician. The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar. ... Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia (in the latter with the name of Valencian), and in the city of LAlguer in the Italian island of... Galician (Galician: galego, IPA: ) is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community with the constitutional status of historic nationality, located in northwestern Spain and small bordering zones in neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias and Castilla y León. ...

While the same pronunciation could be misspelt in several ways — there are homophones, because of the language's silent h, vacillations between b and v, and between c and z (and between c, z, and s in Latin America and some parts of the Peninsula) — the orthography is far more coherent than, say, English orthography. Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words which have the same form (orthographic/phonetic) but unrelated meaning. ... English orthography (or spelling), has relatively complicated rules when compared to other orthographic systems written with alphabetic scripts and contains many inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation, necessitating rote learning for most people learning to read or write English. ...

Special and modified letters

The vowels can be marked with an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) for two purposes: to mark stress when it does not follow the normal pattern; or to differentiate otherwise equally spelt words (this is the true diacritic usage). The acute accent (   ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. ...

The letter ü (u with diaeresis) is used between g and e or i to indicate that it should be pronounced (that is, gu = [gw]). Otherwise, gue and gui are pronounced with a hard g and ignoring the medial u. 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 metre (viüda, to be pronounced as three syllables). This is analogous to the archaic use of ï in naïve or ö in coöperate in English. Ãœ, or ü, is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with umlaut or diaeresis. ...

The letter ñ indicates the palatal nasal /ɲ/. Ñ and ñ in Arial and Times New Roman, with an example word from Panare Ñ is a letter of the modern Roman alphabet formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. ... The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. ...

Stress and accentuation

Written Spanish unequivocally marks stress through a series of orthographic rules. The default stress is on the final syllable when the word ends in any consonant other than -n or -s and on the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable on words that end in a vowel, n or s. Words that do not follow the default stress have an acute accent over the stressed vowel. For purposes of this rule, -y is regarded as a consonant, so that estoy is accented on the o, even though no written accent mark occurs. In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ...

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 the following: two vowels, one of which is either i or u; or three consecutive vowels, the first and last of which include i or u; the letter h is not considered an interruption between vowels. Hence, Spanish writes familia and Portuguese and Catalan have família, while all stress the first i.

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 close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... Hiatus in linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop. ...

A word with final stress is called oxytone (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. Paroxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the syllable before the last syllable, , the English word canasta. ... Proparoxytone is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate syllable, that is, the last but two, the English words acromegaly and operational. ...

Differential accents

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:

¿Adónde vas? Where are you going?

Donde no puedas encontrarme. Where you cannot find me.

(The second donde is pronounced the same but lacks a written accent.)

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 number 0. This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

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

Summary

The acute accent is used in Spanish orthography with the following functions:

Marking stress

Words stressed on the last syllable use an accent when they end with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), with -n, or with -s:

mamá, Bogotá, pensé, consomé, colibrí, iraquí, manatí, rogó, soltó, Perú, tabú, iglú, camión, inglés

Words stressed on the next-to-last syllable use an accent when they do not end with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u), with -n or with -s.

árbol, núbil

Words stressed on other syllables always take the accent.

matemáticas, pentágono

Breaking up diphthongs:

geometría

púa

Differentiating between homographs:

té (noun)	te (pronoun)
sí (adverb)	si (conjunction)
sé (verb)	se (pronoun)

This includes interrogative adverbs and pronouns, in direct and indirect questions and exclamatory sentences.

¿Dónde vives?	No sé dónde vives.
Where do you live?	I don't know where you live.
¿Quién es esa muchacha?	Me pregunto quién es esa muchacha
Who's that girl?	I wonder who's that girl.
¡Qué hermosa pintura!	Observó qué hermosa que era la pintura
What a beautiful painting!	He remarked how the painting was beautiful.

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.^[3] 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 the letter h, which is mute in Spanish, but, despite his prestige, while he got attention, 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. The aim of spelling reform is to make spelling easier for learners and users by removing its difficulties. ... Andrés Bello (Caracas, Venezuela, November 11, 1781 - Santiago, Chile, October 15, 1865), Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose work constitutes an important part of Spanish American culture. ... The Real Academia Española (Spanish for Royal Spanish Academy, RAE) is the institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. ... Juan Ramón Jiménez (24 December 1881 – 29 May 1958) was a Spanish poet. ... Zenobia Camprubí Aymar (c. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Zacatecas is a city in Mexico, the capital of the state of Zacatecas. ...

Mexican Spanish will spell certain indigenous words with x rather than the j that the RAE would recommend. This is generally due to the origin of the word (or the present pronunciation) containing the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ ("sh") sound or another sibilant that is not used in modern standard Spanish. The most noticeable word with this feature is México, which RAE would prefer to spell as Méjico. (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/.) This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ...

See also

• Inverted question mark and exclamation point in Spanish
• Ñ

The inverted question mark and inverted exclamation point in Spanish are used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences, respectively. ... Ñ and ñ in Arial and Times New Roman, with an example word from Panare Ñ is a letter of the modern Roman alphabet formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. ...

References

External links

• Spanish Alphabet — Interactive Spanish Alphabet. You will learn how to pronounce all the letters by themselves and in several words.
• Spanish Alphabet - e Learn Spanish Language — Site including .wav files with the pronunciations of all of the traditional 30 letters of the Spanish alphabet.
• Spanish/Pronunciation — Wikibook with extensive coverage of the Spanish letter pronunciation.
• Collation in Spanish