More on the ah-be-ce-s de espanol

A little more information about the Spanish alphabet, and a link to the Real Academia Espanol, apparently the last word about issues with the Spanish language.

According to the Real Academia Española, which is considered the arbiter of what’s official Spanish, the following letters make up the Spanish alphabet:

a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

The following chart shows the capital letters along with name of each letter.

A: a
B: be
C: ce
CH: che
D: de
E: e
F: efe
G: ge
H: hache
I: i
J: jota
K: ka
L: ele
LL: elle
M: eme
N: ene
Ñ: eñe
O: o
P: pe
Q: cu
R: ere
S: ese
T: te
U: u
V: ve
W: uve doble
X: equis
Y: i griega
Z: zeta

It may interest you to know that not all authorities (or at least not all textbooks) agree on which letters make up the alphabet. Some lists don’t include W (sometimes referred to as doble ve) and K, which exist almost exclusively in words of foreign origin, such as kilowatt. And some lists count RR (erre), which isn’t pronounced the same as R.

It used to be that dictionaries would place ch after c, so, for example, the word achatar would be listed after acordar. But that is no longer the case. In most modern dictionaries, the words are alphabetized as they would be in English (except that the Ñ comes after the N).

Note also that the letters B and V have exactly the same pronunciation, and their names are pronounced exactly alike. Some colorful expressions are used to indicate which letter is being used, such as B de burro and V de vaca (roughly, “B as in burro” and “V as in vaca”). Sometimes B is referred to as be grande (“big B”) and the V as uve or ve chica (“little V”).

You will find as you learn Spanish that vowels are often written with accents, as in tablón, and the U is sometimes topped with a dieresis or umlaut, as in vergüenza. However, vowels with such diacritical marks are not considered separate letters as they can be in some other languages.

Note also that the letters of the alphabet are feminine: la a, “the ‘a’”; la b, “the ‘b.’”

–information from about.com

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