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Spanish orthography
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, 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. Spanish punctuation uniquely includes the use of inverted question and exclamation marks: ⟨¿⟩ ⟨¡⟩.
Spanish uses capital letters much less often than English; they are not used on adjectives derived from proper nouns (e.g. francés, español, portugués from Francia, España, and Portugal, 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 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 the sequences ⟨güe⟩ and ⟨güi⟩—as in bilingüe 'bilingual'—to indicate that the ⟨u⟩ is pronounced [w], rather than having the usual silent role that it plays in unmarked ⟨gue⟩ [ge] and ⟨gui⟩ [gi].
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 the orthography. The currently valid work on orthography is the Ortografía de la lengua española, published in 2010.
The Spanish language is written using the Spanish alphabet, which is the ISO 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 or wolfram) and in sensational spellings: okupa, bakalao. 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 single letters of the alphabet from 1754 to 2010 (and sorted separately from ⟨c⟩ and ⟨l⟩ from 1803 to 1994). Letters in red were, but are no longer, part of the alphabet.
^1 The digraph ⟨ch⟩ represents the affricate /tʃ/. The digraph was formerly treated as a single letter, called che.
^2 The phonemes /θ/ and /s/ are not distinguished in most dialects; see seseo.
^3 With the exception of some loanwords: hámster, hachís, hawaiano, which have /x/.
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Spanish orthography
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, 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. Spanish punctuation uniquely includes the use of inverted question and exclamation marks: ⟨¿⟩ ⟨¡⟩.
Spanish uses capital letters much less often than English; they are not used on adjectives derived from proper nouns (e.g. francés, español, portugués from Francia, España, and Portugal, 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 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 the sequences ⟨güe⟩ and ⟨güi⟩—as in bilingüe 'bilingual'—to indicate that the ⟨u⟩ is pronounced [w], rather than having the usual silent role that it plays in unmarked ⟨gue⟩ [ge] and ⟨gui⟩ [gi].
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 the orthography. The currently valid work on orthography is the Ortografía de la lengua española, published in 2010.
The Spanish language is written using the Spanish alphabet, which is the ISO 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 or wolfram) and in sensational spellings: okupa, bakalao. 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 single letters of the alphabet from 1754 to 2010 (and sorted separately from ⟨c⟩ and ⟨l⟩ from 1803 to 1994). Letters in red were, but are no longer, part of the alphabet.
^1 The digraph ⟨ch⟩ represents the affricate /tʃ/. The digraph was formerly treated as a single letter, called che.
^2 The phonemes /θ/ and /s/ are not distinguished in most dialects; see seseo.
^3 With the exception of some loanwords: hámster, hachís, hawaiano, which have /x/.