Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English and Irish, having a relatively consistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes; in other words, the pronunciation of a given Spanish-language word can largely be predicted from its spelling and to a slightly lesser extent vice-versa. Notable features of Spanish punctuation include the lack of the serial comma and the inverted question marks and exclamation points: ¿ ¡.
Spanish uses capital letters much less often than English; they are not used on adjectives derived from proper nouns (e.g. francés, español, israelí from Francia, España, and Israel, respectively) and book titles capitalize only the first word (e.g. La rebelión de las masas).
Spanish uses only the acute accent, over any vowel: á é í ó ú. This accent is used to mark the tonic (stressed) syllable, though it may also be used occasionally in monosyllabic words to distinguish homophones such as si ('if') and sí ('yes'). The only other diacritics used are the tilde on the letter ?ñ?, which is considered a separate letter from ?n?, and the diaeresis used in some instances over ?u? in words like bilingüe ('bilingual').
In contrast with English, Spanish has an official body that governs linguistic rules, orthography among them: the Royal Spanish Academy, which makes periodic changes to orthography. It is the policy of the Royal Spanish Academy that, when quoting older texts, one should update spelling to the current rules, except in discussions of the history of the Spanish language.
Video Spanish orthography
Alphabet in Spanish
The Spanish language is written using the Spanish alphabet, which is the Latin script with one additional letter: eñe "ñ", for a total of 27 letters. Although the letters "k" and "w" are 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 Española's new 2010 Common Orthography, but in some regions alternative traditional names coexist as explained below. The digraphs "ch" and "ll" were considered letters of the alphabet from 1754 to 2010 (and sorted separately from "c" and "l" from 1803 to 1994). The digraph "rr" is occasionally considered a letter, but officially it was never so.
^1 The sequence ?ch? represents the affricate /t?/. The digraph was formerly treated as a single letter, called che.
^2 The phonemes /?/ and /s/ are not distinguished in many dialects; see seseo.
^3 With the exception of some loanwords: hámster, hachís, 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 yeísmo--it, like the letter ?y?, represents the phoneme /?/.
^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 Help:IPA/Spanish.
When acute accent and diaeresis marks are used on vowels (?á?, ?é?, ?í?, ?ó?, ?ú? and ?ü?) they are considered variants of the plain vowel letters, but ?ñ? is considered a separate letter from ?n?. This makes a difference when sorting alphabetically: ?ñ? appears in dictionaries after ?n?. For example, in a Spanish dictionary piñata comes after pinza.
There are five digraphs: ?ch? ("che" or "ce hache"), ?ll? ("elle" or "doble ele"), ?rr? ("doble erre"), ?gu? ("ge u") and ?qu? ("cu u"). While che and elle were formerly treated each as a single letter, in 1994 the tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies, by request of UNESCO and other international organizations, agreed to alphabetize ?ch? and ?ll? as ordinary sequences of letters. Thus, for example, in dictionaries, chico is alphabetized after centro and before ciudad, instead of being alphabetized after all words beginning with cu- as was formerly done. Despite their former status as unitary letters of the alphabet, ?ch? and ?ll? have always been treated as sequences with regard to the rules of capitalization. Thus 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.
This is the list of letters from most to least frequent in Spanish texts: ?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?; the vowels take around 45% of the text.
Alternative names
- B and V
- The letters ?b? and ?v? were originally simply known as be and ve, which in modern Spanish are pronounced identically. In Old Spanish, they likely represented different sounds but the sounds merged later. Their usual names are be and uve; in some regions, speakers may instead add something to the names to distinguish them. Some Mexicans and most Peruvians generally say be grande / chica ('big B' / 'little V'); Argentines, Uruguayans and Chileans, be larga / corta ('long B' / 'short V'). Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter; e.g., b de burro / v de vaca ('b as in burro' / 'v as in vaca'); Colombians tend to say be grande for B and ve pequeña for V. In Venezuela, they called B as b de Bolívar, and V as v de Venezuela; but also, as be alta y ve baja ('tall B' / 'short V'). Regardless of these regional differences, all Spanish-speaking people recognize be as the official name of B.
- R
- 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. Ere is considered obsolete. The name ere was used when referring specifically to the alveolar tap /?/ 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 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?.
- W
- In Latin American Spanish, ?w? is sometimes called doble ve, ve doble, or doble uve. In Colombia and Mexico, because of English acculturation, the letter is usually called doble u (like English "double u"). In Spain it is usually called uve doble. In the Spanish pronunciation of acronyms like "BMW", it is simplified as be eme uve.
- I
- Because of its origin, ?i? is occasionally known as i latina ("Latin i") to distinguish it from ?y?, which is known as i griega ("Greek i").
- Y
- The most common name for ?y? in Spain is i griega, but in Latin American Spanish it has been commonly superseded by ye, in an effort to standardize on a one-word name, as opposed to a name consisting of two words. Using ye as the only name for the letter is one of the newest proposed changes specified by the 2010 new common orthography.
- Z
- The name for ?z? is zeta (formerly ceta, pronounced the same). In older Spanish, it was called zeda or ceda, and the diminutive form of this word, cedilla, is now used in both Spanish and English to refer to the diacritic mark exhibited in the letter ?ç?.
Maps Spanish orthography
Orthography
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 México or Pedro Ximénez (both /x/). These orthographic rules are similar to, but not the same as, those of other Romance 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 of ?c/z? and ?s? for /s/;
- the occasional use of accents to distinguish two words that sound the same, such as tú and tu, sí and si, más and mas.
Consonants
- ^ Orthographic <w> in names of Visigothic origin is thought to have been pronounced [?] in Old Spanish (in which /b/ and /?/ are separate phonemes); /?/ is also spelled <v> in Old Spanish. See History of Spanish#Merger of /b/ and /v/.
The only consonant letters that can be doubled in the Spanish orthography are "l", "r" (as the digraphs "ll" and "rr"), "c" (only when the two "c"s have different sounds: acción, diccionario), "n" (e.g. innato, perenne, connotar, dígannos), and "b" (in a few words with the prefix sub-: subbase, subbético). Exceptions are gamma (and its derivatives gammaglobulina, gammagrafía), digamma, kappa, atto-, as well as unadapted foreign words (including proper names) and their derivations (see below).
Vowels
The letter Y
The letter "y" is consistently used in the consonantal value. The use of the letter "y" for a vowel or a semivowel is very restricted. The diphthongs ai, ei, oi, ui are usually written ay, ey, oy, uy at the end of words (e. g. hay, ley, voy, muy), though exceptions may occur in loanwords (e.g. bonsái, agnusdéi). The letter y is conserved in rarely used encliticized verbal forms like doyte, haylas (it is more normal to say te doy, las hay). The letter "y" is used for the vowel /i/ in the conjunction y and in some acronyms, like pyme (from pequeña y mediana empresa). Otherwise, "y" for a vowel or semivowel occurs only in some archaically-spelled proper names and their derivations: Guaymas, guaymeño, and also fraybentino (from Fray Bentos with regular usage of "y" in a word-final diphthong). Derivatives of foreign proper names also conserve "y": taylorismo, from Taylor.
Special and modified letters
The vowels can be marked with an acute accent--á, é, í, ó, ú, ý--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 diacrítica in Spanish). The accented "y" is found only in some proper names: Aýna, Laýna, Ýñiguez.
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 "ü" ("u" with diaeresis,) is used in this context to indicate that the "u" is not silent, e.g. pingüino /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 (vïuda, to be pronounced as three syllables). This is analogous to the use of "ï" in naïve in English.
Also a silent "u" always follows a "q" when followed by "e" or "i", as in queso, química, but there is no case for the combination "qü", with "cu" fulfilling this role (as in cuestión). There are no native words in Spanish with the combination "qua" nor "quo"; again, "cu" is used instead (cuando). When they appear, usually from Latin idioms such as statu quo, the "u" is always pronounced, so "ü" is never needed after "q". Prior to the introduction of the 2010 Common Orthography words such as cuórum ('quorum'), cuásar ('quasar') or Catar ('Qatar') were spelled with "q"; this is no longer so.
Keyboard requirements
To write Spanish on a typewriter or to set type, the special characters required are á, é, í,ó, ú, ñ, Ñ, ü, Ü, ¿, and ¡. The upper-case Á, É, Í, Ó, and Ú are also prescribed by the RAE, although occasionally dispensed with in practice.
As implemented on the mechanical typewriter, the keyboard contained a single dead key, with the acute accent ( ´ ) in the lower-case position, and the dieresis ( ¨ ) in the upper-case position. With these, one could write á, é, í, ó, ú, and ü. A separate key provided ñ/Ñ. (A dead key "~" is used on the Spanish and Portuguese keyboards, but on the Latin American keyboard the "~" is not a dead key). The inverted marks "¿" and "¡" completed the required minimum. When an additional key was added to electro-mechanical typewriters, this was used for "ª" and "º", though these are not required. (They are somewhat archaic ordinal abbreviations: "1º" for primero, "2ª" for segunda, etc.)
As implemented in the MS-DOS operating system and its successor Microsoft Windows, a ç/Ç pair--not required in Spanish but needed for Catalan, Portuguese, and French--is typically added, and the use of the acute accent and dieresis with capital letters (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ü) is supported. Although not needed for Spanish, another dead key with "`" (the grave accent) in lower-case position and "^" (the circumflex accent) in upper-case position was included. Also available is "·" (the "flying point", required in Catalan). To make room for these characters not on the standard English keyboard, characters used primarily in programming, science, and mathematics--"[" and "]", "{" and "}", "/" and "\", "|", and "<" and ">"--are removed, requiring special keystroke sequences to access.
Stress and accentuation
Stress in Spanish is marked unequivocally 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. The written accent will thus appear only in certain forms of a word and not others, for example andén, plural andenes. In many cases the accent is essential to understanding what a word means, for example hablo (I speak) as opposed to habló (he/she/Ud. spoke).
For purposes of counting syllables and assigning stress in Spanish, where an unmarked high vowel is followed by another vowel the sequence is treated as a rising diphthong, counted as a single syllable--unlike Portuguese and Catalan, which tend to treat such a sequence as two syllables. 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 náutico). And a triphthong is any combination of three vowels beginning and ending with unstressed high vowels (as in cambiáis or buey). Hence Spanish writes familia (no accent), while Portuguese and Catalan both put an accent mark on família (all three languages stress the first ?i?). The letter ?h? is not considered an interruption between vowels (so that ahumar is considered to have two syllables: ahu-mar; this may vary in some regions, where ?h? is used as a hiatus or diphthong-broking mark for unstressed vowels, so the pronunciation would be then a-hu-mar, though that trait is gradually disappearing).
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, 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-to-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. (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 as poniéndoselo.) All proparoxytones and sobresdrújulas have a written accent mark.
Adjectives spelled with a written accent (such as fácil, geográfico, cortés) keep the written accent when they are made into adverbs with the -mente ending (thus fácilmente, geográficamente, cortésmente), 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 fácilmente, or not marked, as in libremente--may be manifested as a secondary stress in the adverb.
Accentuation of capital letters
The Real Academia Española indicates that accents are required on capitals (but not when the capitals are used in acronyms).
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 and the relative pronoun is not:
- ¿A dónde vas? 'Where are you going?'
- A donde 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. Up until 2010, ?ó? was used when applied to numbers: 7 ó 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).
These diacritics are often called acentos diacríticos or tildes diacríticas in traditional Spanish grammar.
Foreign words
Loanwords in Spanish are usually written according to Spanish spelling conventions (extranjerismos adaptados): e.g. pádel, fútbol, chófer, máster, cederrón ('CD-ROM'). However, some foreign words (extranjerismos crudos) are used in Spanish texts in their original forms, not conforming to Spanish orthographic conventions: e.g. ballet, blues, jazz, jeep, lady, pizza, sheriff, software. The RAE prescribes extranjerismos crudos to be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available:
- Quiero escuchar jazz y comer pizza.
- Quiero escuchar jazz y comer pizza.
- Quiero escuchar "jazz" y comer "pizza".
In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.
This typographical emphasis is not used for foreign proper names and their derivations; nor is it used for some Spanish derivations of extranjerismos crudos, such as pizzería.
Capitalization
Capitalization in Spanish is sparse compared to English. In general, only personal and place names, some abbreviations (e.g. Sr. López, but señor López); the first word (only) in the title of a book, movie, song, etc. (except when the title contains only two words, then the second word is also sometimes capitalized); 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.
Older conventions
The Spanish Royal Academy has reformed the orthographic rules of Spanish many times.
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? was chosen for the single resulting phoneme in 1815. 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 México itself--see below.
The letter ?ç? (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 coraçon, cabeça, fuerça became modern corazón, 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, zipizape; some borrowed words have double spellings: zinc/cinc.
The old spellings with ?ç?, ?ze?, and ?zi? remained in use until the eighteenth century. They were replaced by ?z?, ?ce?, and ?ci?, respectively in 1726. ?Ze? and ?zi? continued to be used in some words due to their etymology (e.g. zelo, zizaña), but this usage was largely reduced during the 1860--1880s, so these words became celo and cizaña. The letter ?x? was replaced by ?j? in 1815, although word-final ?x? remained until 1832 (e.g. relox, now reloj). The combinations ?je? and ?ji? were originally used only in a few etymological cases (e.g. Jesús, Jeremías) and also in diminutives (pajita); after the reform of 1815, ?xe? and ?xi? were replaced by ?ge? and ?gi? in the Ortografía but by ?je? and ?ji? in the Diccionario; since 1832, the spelling was firmly established to be ?je? and ?ji?. Also, unetymological spellings with ?ge?, ?gi? (that is, words that did not have g in Latin) were changed to ?je?, ?ji? (e.g. muger, from Latin mulier, became mujer).
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'). In orthography, the distinction was suppressed in 1763.
Words spelled in modern Spanish with ?cua?, ?cuo? (e.g. cuando, cuatro, cuota) were written with ?qua?, ?quo? up until 1815.
In 1726, most double consonants were simplified (e.g. grammatica -> gramática, addicion -> adición)--but the ?m? of a prefix before the ?m? of a root was differentiated to ?n? in 1763 (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).
From 1741 to 1815, the circumflex was used over vowels to indicate that preceding ?ch? and ?x? should be pronounced /k/ and /ks/ respectively and not /t?/ and /x/, e.g. exâctitud, patriarchâ.
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.g. capitán, también, jardín, acción, común--but not future-tense verb forms like serán, tendrán); verbs in the imperfect tense (e.g. tenía, vivían); the possessives mío and mía; and the word día. 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 1911. The accent-marked infinitive oír begins to outnumber the unaccented form around 1920. Monosyllabic preterit verb forms such as dio and fue were usually written with accent marks before the 1950s.
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. dieciséis, veintinueve). For the numbers from 21 to 29, the "fused" forms emerged over the second half of the 19th century. For those from 16 to 19, the one-word forms took the lead in the 1940s. Fusing of number-names above 30 (e.g. treintaicinco, cuarentaiocho) is rare.
Reform proposals
In spite of the relatively regular orthography of Spanish, there have been several initiatives to simplify it further. 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. 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.
A 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 /?/ 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. The American Spanish colloquial term chicano is shortened from mechicano, which uses /t?/ in place of the /?/ of rural Mexican Spanish /me?i'kano/.
Arabic alphabet
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish (as well as Portuguese and Ladino) was sometimes written in the Arabic alphabet by moriscos. This form of Spanish is called aljamiado.
See also
- Inverted question and exclamation marks
- Spanish manual alphabet
- Chilean manual alphabet
References
Bibliography
- Penny, Ralph (2002). A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-01184-1.
- Butt, John; Benjamin, Carmen (2011). A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (5th ed.). Oxford: Routledge. ISBN 978 1 444 13769 9.
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.
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