Spanish orthography is one of the most phonemic among those that are written with the Latin alphabet. A phonemic orthography is a Writing system where the written Graphemes correspond to Phonemes the spoken sounds of the language For detailed information on the pronunciation not found here, see also Spanish phonology. For assistance in making phonetic transcriptions of Spanish for Wikipedia articles see HelpIPA chart for Spanish.

Contents 1 Alphabet 1.1 Letters and letter names 1.2 Alternative names 1.3 Pronunciation of c and z 2 Orthography 2.1 Special and modified letters 2.2 Stress and accentuation 2.3 Differential accents 2.4 Summary 2.5 Older conventions 2.6 Reform proposals 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Alphabet

Spanish language
Names for the language History Pronunciation Dialects Orthography Grammar: Determiners Nouns Pronouns Adjectives Prepositions Verbs Conjugation Irregular verbs
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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. There are two Names given to the Spanish language: Spanish ( español) and Castilian ( castellano) The Spanish language developed from Vulgar Latin, with loan-words from Basque in the north and Arabic in the southern part of the Iberian For assistance in making phonetic transcriptions of Spanish for Wikipedia articles see HelpIPA chart for Spanish. Spanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from each other especially in pronunciation and vocabulary Spanish' ( español castellano) is a language originating in North-Central Spain which is spoken throughout Spain most countries in the Americas the Philippines and Equatorial The Spanish language uses determiners in a similar way to English The Spanish language has nouns that express concrete objects groups and classes of objects qualities feelings and other abstractions The Spanish language has a range of Pronouns that in some ways work quite differently from English ones The Spanish language uses Adjectives in a similar way to English and most other Indo-European languages Spanish adjectives usually go after the noun they modify and The Spanish language has a number of Prepositions (Spanish does not use Postpositions) The full list is traditionally recited as follows a ante Spanish verbs are one of the most complex areas of Spanish grammar. See also Spanish verbs This is a paradigm of Spanish Verbs that is a set of conjugation tables for the model Regular verbs and Spanish verbs are a complex area of Spanish grammar, with many combinations of tenses aspects and moods (up to fifty conjugated forms per verb History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. In Linguistics, diaeresis, or dieresis, is the pronunciation of two adjacent Vowels in two separate Syllables rather than as a Diphthong The letters k and w appear mostly in loanwords (such as karate, kilo or walkman). A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation

The following letter names appear in preference order for speaking in Spanish from Spain. Spain () or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España is a country located mostly in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. ^[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/	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 /ene/	V v	uve /ˈube/ ve /be/ ve baja /be ˈbaxa/ ve chica /be ˈtʃika/ ve corta /be ˈkoɾta/
F f	efe /ˈefe/	Ñ ñ	eñe /ˈeɲe/	W w	uve doble /ˈube ˈdoble/ 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 /ɟʝe/ i griega /i ˈgɾjega/
I i	i /i/ i latina /i laˈtina/	Q q	cu /ku/	Z z	zeta /ˈθeta/ zeda /ˈθeda/

(Listen to the alphabet from 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. The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America. 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. A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond Ch is a digraph in the Roman alphabet. It is treated as a letter of its own in the Ll / ll is a digraph which occurs in several natural Languages In English In English, ll represents the same sound 1803 ( MDCCCIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a ^[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. The Association of Spanish Language Academies (Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on November 16 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. An elevator or lift is a Transport device used to move people or goods vertically from one floor to another The Real Academia Española (“Royal Spanish Academy” the RAE, is the official royal 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. 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". The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America. Peru (Perú Piruw Piruw officially the Republic of Peru ( reˈpuβlika del peˈɾu is a country in western South America. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Argentina topics. Catalonia (Cataluña Catalunya Aranese: Catalonha) is an Autonomous Community in the northeast part of Spain. 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. Regardless of these regional names, all Spanish speaking people recognize be / uve for the official names of B and V.

• The digraph rr is sometimes called doble erre or erre doble. Rr is a Digraph which occurs in several Natural languages In the English language, "rr" is usually pronounced equivalently to "r" 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 Real Academia Española (“Royal Spanish Academy” the RAE, is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language 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. The alveolar tap or flap is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that The alveolar trill is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental 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 zeta or ceta (both pronounced the same), or occasionally zeda or ceda (again, both pronounced the same).

Pronunciation of c and z

Further information: Spanish dialects and varieties

The pronunciation of the letters c (before e or i) and z varies. Spanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from each other especially in pronunciation and vocabulary 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. Seville ( Spanish: Sevilla, see also different names) is the artistic cultural and financial capital of southern Spain. The Canary Islands ( English pronunciation kəˈnæriː ˈaɪləndz Spanish: Islas Canarias, ˈizlas kaˈnarjas are a Spanish The names of the letters are thus pronounced /se/, /ˈseta/, and /ˈese/ respectively. A minority of speakers pronounce these with [θ]; see Ceceo for a detailed discussion. In Spanish dialectology, the terms ceceo, seseo and distinción are used to describe the opposition between dialects that distinguish the Phonemes

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 Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Catalan ˈkætəˌlæn ( català kətəˈla or) is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official

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. A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language.

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). History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. 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]). Letter Ü The letter Ü occurs in Hungarian, Karelian, Turkish, Estonian, Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean 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.

The letter ñ indicates the palatal nasal /ɲ/. Ñ (lower case 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 The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this

Stress and accentuation

Written Spanish unequivocally marks stress through a series of orthographic rules. In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word 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. A close vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in many spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as e. , it signals a hiatus): for example, tía, and país have two syllables each. Hiatus (Latin "yawning" (haɪˈeɪtəs 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). An oxytone (ˈɒksɨtoʊn from the Greek:, oxýtonos) is a word whose last Syllable is stressed such as the English words correct Paroxytone (παροξύτονος paroxýtonos) is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable that is the syllable before Proparoxytone (προπαροξύτονος proparoxýtonos) is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate syllable that is the last but two 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

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:

¿A dónde vas? Where are you going?

A donde no puedas encontrarme. Where you cannot find me.

(The second donde is pronounced with less stress, therefore 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 digit 0. Hypercorrection is a Linguistic phenomenon which may take any of the following forms an elaborate prescriptively based correction of common

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.

matemática, 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 era la pintura.
What a beautiful painting!	He remarked how the painting was beautiful.

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. es '''''Don Quixote''''' (, see spelling and pronunciation below fully titled es '''''El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha''''' ("The Ingenious Hidalgo Don 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. Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate often officially sanctioned or mandated change to spelling takes place Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López (b Caracas, Venezuela, d The Real Academia Española (“Royal Spanish Academy” the RAE, is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language ^[4] 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. Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón ( Moguer, Spain, 24 December, 1881 – Santurce, Puerto Rico, 29 May, 1958 Zenobia Camprubí Aymar (c 1887 &ndash 25 October 1956) was a Spanish -born Writer and Poet; she was also a noted translator of the 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. Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (born March 6 1927 is a Colombian Zacatecas is a city in Mexico, the capital of the state of Zacatecas. 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. Mexican Spanish ( español mexicano in Spanish is the Spanish language as it is spoken in Mexico. 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 voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative ( IPA) is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages A sibilant is a type of Fricative or Affricate Consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the Vocal tract towards The most noticeable word with this feature is México (see Toponymy of Mexico). The Real Academia Española recommends this spelling. ^[5] (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
• Ñ

References

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
• How to type Spanish keys on American keyboard
• Ortografía de la lengua española published by the Real Academia Española (RAE). The Real Academia Española (“Royal Spanish Academy” the RAE, is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language
• 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. Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a Wikimedia Foundation Wiki for the creation of

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