Spanish alphabet
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Template:Spanish The Spanish alphabet traditionally consists of the following 29 letters:
This includes the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet plus the letter Ñ (representing the voiced, nasal palatal sound represented by in IPA), and the digraphs ch and ll.
Since Ñ is a separate letter, and not an accented character, it is alphabetized after N. So, in English piñata comes before ping-pong (ñ is considered in English to be an accented n), but in Spanish, ping-pong comes first (again, because ñ is a separate letter in Spanish).
There are three sounds in the Spanish language which are represented by digraphs, namely ch, ll and rr. Ch and ll are traditionally alphabetized after c and l respectively, and considered to be separate letters just like ñ. However, rr is not sufficiently separate from r to ever have been counted as a separate letter.
In 1994, the Spanish Academy dropped this custom joining other dictionary makers. It made alphabetization too different from other European languages making it difficult for foreigners to understand. However, many Spanish speakers still use them as separate letters when spelling (whilst others spell them out separately as ce hache and doble ele).
It also can be noted that it is linguistically incorrect to identify graphs with sounds, but with an orthography as accurate as that of Spanish, it is easy to make this identification.
K is not often found in Spanish words, and W still less; they only appear in words taken from other languages.
By default, the stress in a word falls on the penult if the word ends with a vowel, n, or s, and on the ultima otherwise. Wherever the stress does not follow this rule, it must be indicated with an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú, called acento agudo or simply acento in Spanish) over the relevant vowel. The acute accent over a stressed vowel also acts as a diæresis to prevent the formation of a diphthong, as in país, which has two syllables, not one. In addition, the acute accent distinguishes interrogative pronouns from their relative counterparts (¿dónde? but donde) and various other words that are otherwise spelt the same (si 'if' but sí 'yes').
Spanish also uses the diæresis (diéresis) over u (ü) in the two combinations güe and güi to indicate that the u is pronounced ([gwe] and [gwi]), as it would ordinarily be silent in gue and gui. Occasionally it occurs in poetry over the first vowel of a diphthong to indicate an irregular disyllabic pronunciation required by the metre (vïuda, to be pronounced as three syllables). This diæresis and the acute accent are not enough to make separate letters out of á, é, í, ó, ú and ü.
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Letter names
| Modern latter names | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | a | J | jota | R | erre |
| B | be | K | ka | S | ese |
| C | ce | L | ele | T | te |
| D | de | M | eme | U | u |
| E | e | N | ene | V | uve |
| F | efe | Ñ | eñe | W | uve doble |
| G | ge | O | o | X | equis |
| H | hache | P | pe | Y | i griega |
| I | i | Q | cu | Z | zeta |
See International Phonetic Alphabet for the symbols used to represent pronunciation. This table does not feature the traditional names of the letters Ch and Ll, which are called Che and elle . These names are habitually used in spelling. For example, chillón is spelt out as che, i, elle, o con acento, ene.
The fact that these are separate letters is not supposed to affect capitalisation. 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. This rule is respected with Ch, but with Ll one does sometimes see lifts with buttons marked LLamar.
Alternative names
The letters b and v were originally simply known as be and ve and pronounced accordingly. However, now that Spanish no longer distinguishes between these sounds, it has become necessary to add something to the names to tell them apart. The table above gives the standard names used in Spain. You may encounter some of the alternative names. Mexicans often say be grande/ve chica; Argentinians, be larga/ve corta; Catalans, be alta/ve baja. Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter e.g. be de burro/ve de vaca.
It is sometimes suggested that the name of the letter R is ere when it is single, and erre when it is double.
I is occasionally known as i latina (Latin i) to distinguish it from Y, which is known as i griega (Greek i). The latter is a late borrowing from the Greek letter υ (upsilon). In turn, the letter Y is occasionally known as ye.
W can be doble ve, ve doble, or doble u.
Z is usually called ceta or zeta (both pronounced the same), or occasionally ceda or zeda (again, both pronounced the same).
See also
External links
- Spanish Alphabet (http://www.donquijote.org/spanishlanguage/alphabet/) — Interactive Spanish Alphabet. You will learn how to pronounce all the letters by themselves and in several words.
- http://spanish.allinfo-about.com/pronunciation/pr-alphabet.html — Site including .wav files with the pronunciations of all of the traditional 30 letters of the Spanish alphabet.
- http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Pronouncing_Spanish_words — Wikibook with extensive coverage of the Spanish letter pronunciation.