Spanish orthography Totally Explained

Everything about Spanish Alphabet totally explained

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.

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).
The following letter names appear in preference order for speaking in Spanish from Spain.

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. 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. 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.
   Their being regarded as separate letters wasn't supposed to affect capitalization. Therefore, the word chillón in a text written in all caps should be CHILLÓN and not ChILLÓN, and if it's the first word of a sentence, it's 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.

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's 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". Some people give examples of words spelt with the letter; for example, 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. It is sometimes suggested that the name of the letter r be ere when it's single, and erre when it's 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 zeta or ceta (both pronounced the same), or occasionally zeda or ceda (again, both pronounced the same).

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. A minority of speakers pronounce these with [θ]; see Ceceo for a detailed discussion.

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.
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.

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 doesn't 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 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/.

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 don't 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 isn't 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 (for example, 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 doesn't 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, (informal object case of "you") vs. ("tea"); (third person reflexive) vs. ("I know" or imperative "be"); (informal "your") vs. (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 can't find me. (The second is pronounced with less stress, therefore lacks a written accent.)
   The use of is poetic for the vocative: ¡Ó señor! The use of ó for the word (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.
   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 don't 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: �

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 was at one time used where modern Spanish uses z.

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. 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's 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 isn't 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 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/.)

Further Information

Get more info on 'Spanish Alphabet'.

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