Spanish orthography
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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.
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[edit] Alphabet
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| Don Quixote is a recognized work in Spanish literature. |
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| Names for the language · History Pronunciation · Dialects · Orthography |
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[edit] 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).
The following letter names appear in preference order for speaking in Spanish from Spain.[1]
| A a | a /a/ | J j | jota /ˈxota/ | R r | erre /ˈere/ ere /ˈeɾe/ |
| B b | be /be/ be alta /be ˈalta/ be grande /be ˈgɾande/ be larga /be ˈlaɾga/ |
K k | ka /ka/ | S s | ese /ˈese/ |
| C c | ce /θe/ /se/ | L l | ele /ˈele/ | T t | te /te/ |
| Ch ch | che /tʃe/ | Ll ll | doble ele/ˈdoble ˈele/ elle /ˈeʎe/ |
U u | u /u/ |
| D d | de /de/ | M m | eme /ˈeme/ | ||
| E e | e /e/ | N n | ene /ˈene/ | V v | uve /ˈube/ ve /be/ ve baja /be ˈβaxa/ ve chica /be ˈtʃika/ ve corta /be ˈkoɾta/ |
| F f | efe /ˈefe/ | Ñ ñ | eñe /ˈeɲe/ | W w | uve doble /ˈube ˈdoble/ doble uve /ˈdoble ˈuβe/ doble ve /ˈdoble 'be/ doble u /ˈdoble u/ ve doble /be ˈdoble/ |
| G g | ge /xe/ | O o | o /o/ | X x | equis /ˈekis/ |
| H h | hache /ˈatʃe/ | P p | pe /pe/ | Y y | ye /ʝe/ i griega /i ˈgɾjega/ |
| I i | i /i/ i latina /i laˈtina/ |
Q q | qu /ku/ | Z z | zeta /ˈθeta/ /ˈseta/ zeda /ˈθeda/ /ˈseda/ |
(Listen to the alphabet recited by a native speaker from Mexico)
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.[2] 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.[3]
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.
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.
[edit] 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,[4] speakers often add something to the names to tell them apart. Some Mexicans and most of Peruvians 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"). Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter; e.g., be de burro / ve de vaca ("burro's B" / "vaca's V"). 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. 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 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, uve doble, or doble u.
- 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 zeta or ceta (both pronounced the same), or occasionally zeda or ceda (again, both pronounced the same).
[edit] Pronunciation of C and Z
The pronunciation of the letters c (before e or i) and z varies. Generally speaking, in Spain, c /θe/ and z /ˈθeta/ are clearly distinguished from s /ˈese/. In Spanish speaking regions of North and South America, and in some areas of the southern part of Spain (such as the city of Seville and the Canary Islands), c, z, and s all denote the same sound. The names of the letters are thus pronounced /se/, /ˈseta/, and /ˈese/ respectively. Another group of speakers pronounce s with [θ]; see Ceceo for a detailed discussion.
[edit] Orthography
Spanish orthography is such that every speaker can divine 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.
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, between y and ll (in most dialects), 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, for example, English orthography.
[edit] 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 spelt words (this is the true diacritic usage).
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 a silent medial u. The diaeresis (diéresis in Spanish) 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 (or the archaic ö in coöperate) in English.
The letter ñ indicates the palatal nasal /ɲ/.
[edit] 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. 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.
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 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.
[edit] 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:
- ¿Adónde vas? Where are you going?
- Adonde no puedes 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.
[edit] 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.
- matemática, pentágono
Breaking up diphthongs:
-
geometría, púa
Differentiating between homographs:
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 era la pintura. What a beautiful painting! He remarked how the painting was beautiful.
[edit] Older conventions
At one time, the letter x was commonly used for the /x/ or /ʃ/ sound, most notably in the name Don Quixote, which never had the /ks/ pronunciation sometimes given to it by English speakers, and is written Don Quijote in modern Spanish. 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.
[edit] 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.[5] 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.
Mexican Spanish will 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/ ("sh") 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.[6] (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/.)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Listen to the Spanish alphabet recited by a Mexican speaker.
- ^ See the DRAE for the entries on ch and ll
- ^ "No obstante, en el X Congreso de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, celebrado en 1994, se acordó adoptar para los diccionarios académicos, a petición de varios organismos internacionales, el orden alfabético latino universal, en el que la ch y la ll no se consideran letras independientes. En consecuencia, estas dos letras pasan a alfabetizarse en los lugares que les corresponden dentro de la C (entre -cg- y -ci-) y dentro de la L (entre -lk- y -lm-), respectivamente." Real Academia Española. Explanation at http://www.spanishpronto.com/ (in Spanish and English)
- ^ Penny (2002:38)
- ^ Urdaneta, I. P. (1982). "The history of Spanish orthography, Andrea Bello's proposal and the Chilean attempt: Implications for a theory on spelling reform". The Simplified Spelling Society. http://www.spellingsociety.org/bulletins/b82/fall/spanish.php.
- ^ DPD 1ª edición, 2ª tirada
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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/Pronunciation — Wikibook with extensive coverage of the Spanish letter pronunciation.
