Orthographic principles Spanish orthographic rules are similar, but not identical, to those of other
Romance languages of the
Iberian Peninsula, such as
Portuguese,
Catalan and
Galician. In general, the orthography of Spanish is such that the pronunciation of most words is unambiguous given their written form. The main exception is the letter , which usually represents or , but can also represent or , especially in proper nouns from times of
Old Spanish (e.g. or – in both cases the is pronounced ). The converse does not always hold—for a given pronunciation there may be multiple possible spellings, as a result of decisions by the RAE. The main issues are: • use of both and for • use of both and for before and • silent • occasional use of
differential accents to distinguish two words that sound the same, such as / , / , and / For some speakers, additional problems may come from: • use of and () • use of / , and (less commonly) as part of a rising diphthong at the beginning of words (variant of ); • use of and (as well as and before and ), either for () or for () • use of (also in a few prefixed words) and the letter combinations and before and , either for () or for () • use of , and before a vowel for ; • use of both and for before consonants (in a few Greek-derived words, is used for word-initial from etymological ξ). The use of and , and , and the silent is mostly based on etymology. In particular, in many cases is not a continuation of Old Spanish (which often had in place of intervocalic as a result of Vulgar Latin merger, as in other Romance languages), but an artificial restitution based on Latin: 'horse' is spelled as Latin and unlike French , Italian , Portuguese , or Catalan . The letter is used in place of Latin and (in a few words also ): {}} and {{angbr|}}}, and , and and —are removed, requiring special keystroke sequences to access. On a USA or UK physical keyboard, all of the Spanish characters are present using the US-International layout.
Stress and accentuation Stress in Spanish is marked unequivocally through a series of orthographic rules. The default stress is on the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable on words that end in a vowel, or (not preceded by another consonant) and on the final syllable when the word ends in any consonant other than or or in a consonant group. Words that do not follow the default stress have an acute accent over the stressed vowel. In many cases, the accent is essential to understanding what a word means, for example contrasts with . A corollary of the accentuation rule above is that the written accent can sometimes appear in certain forms of a word but not others, to indicate that the same syllable is stressed. For example: • Some nouns and adjectives gain or lose their accent mark when they become plural: e.g. → ; → . • Verbs may gain or lose their accent mark when a pronominal suffix is added: e.g. + → ; + → . • An accent mark is always present if two (or more) pronouns are suffixed: + + → ; + + → . For purposes of counting syllables and assigning stress in Spanish, where an unmarked high vowel is followed by another vowel the sequence is treated as a
rising diphthong, counted as a single syllable—unlike Portuguese and Catalan, which tend to treat such a sequence as two syllables. A syllable is of the form
XAXX, where
X represents a consonant, permissible consonant cluster, or no sound at all, and
A represents a vowel, diphthong, or triphthong. A diphthong is any sequence of an unstressed
high vowel ( or ) with another vowel (as in or ), and a triphthong is any combination of three vowels beginning and ending with unstressed high vowels (as in or ). Hence, Spanish writes (no accent), while Portuguese and Catalan both put an accent mark on '
(all three languages stress the first ). By contrast, Spanish puts the accent on , while Portuguese and Catalan spell ' without the accent (again, all three languages stress the ). An accent over the
high vowel ( or ) of a vowel sequence prevents it from being a diphthong (i.e., it signals a
hiatus): for example, , , and all have two syllables each. In the intervocalic position, the letter does not necessarily mark a hiatus and therefore does not prevent the formation of a diphthong; for instance, is considered to have two syllables:
ahu-mar (). As such, it is also not taken into account when determining the stressed syllable; for example, has three syllables, with
a being the stressed vowel:
de-sahu-cio ( or ). This is also why words such as require an acute accent over the high vowel to break the diphthong (without the accent, the word
*buho would be considered a single-syllable word, with the assumed pronunciation ). If the diphthongs are written at the end of words, the letter is considered a consonant letter for the purpose of accentuation: , . A word with final stress is called
oxytone (or in traditional Spanish grammar texts); a word with penultimate stress is called
paroxytone ( or ); a word with antepenultimate stress (stress on the third-to-last syllable) is called
proparoxytone (). 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 . (Spanish words can be stressed only on one of the last three syllables, except in the case of a verb form with
enclitic pronouns, such as or .) All proparoxytones and have a written accent mark. Adjectives spelled with a written accent (such as , , ) keep the written accent when they are made into adverbs with the
-mente ending (thus , , ), and do not gain any if they do not have one (thus from ). In the pronunciation of these adverbs—as with all adverbs in —primary stress is on the ending, on the
penultimate syllable. The original stress of the adjective—whether marked, as in , or not marked, as in —may be manifested as a secondary stress in the adverb. Some words, such as , , and , are pronounced either with a diphthong or with a hiatus between the adjacent vowels, depending on the region. Pre-1999 orthographic rules treated these as hiatus, and accentuated the words accordingly (e.g. , ). The 1999 orthography reform by the RAE admitted the two spellings (with or without the accent), corresponding to two different pronunciations. The subsequent 2010 reform, though, declared that for orthographic and syllabification purposes such letter combinations should always be considered diphthongs, so the only correct spelling is now and . Regardless of the spelling, however, these words may still be pronounced with a hiatus as before, and RAE does not discourage this practice. Furthermore, other grammatical rules were not changed by the reform; for example, "trees and grass" can be translated as either (if
hie pronounced as a diphthong) or (if pronounced with a hiatus); the latter form is still correct even though
hie is always treated as a diphthong for the purposes of syllabification.
Accentuation of capital letters The Real Academia Española indicates that accents are required on capitals (but not when the capitals are used in
acronyms).
Differential accents used in a university classroom shows
students' efforts at placing "
ü" and
acute accent diacritic used in Spanish orthography. In eight cases, the written accent is used to distinguish stressed monosyllabic words from
clitics: The written accent in the word is conserved in its plural: . However, it is usually not conserved in the imperatives and when combined with a pronominal suffix, unless it is necessary for stress purposes (e.g. + → (formal form of "give me") and + → (formal form of "give it"), but + + → (formal form of "give it to me")). Names of letters and musical notes are written without the accent, even if they have homonymous clitics:
, , , , , ; , , . The written accent is also used in the
interrogative pronouns to distinguish them from
relative pronouns (which are pronounced the same but unstressed): : 'Where are you going?' : 'Where you cannot find me.' The use of in the word (meaning 'or') is a
hypercorrection. Up until 2010, was used when applied to numbers: ('7 or 9'), to avoid possible confusion with the digit 0. The tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies deemed the use of an accent unnecessary, as typewriting eliminates possible confusion due to the different shapes of (zero) and (the letter). Adjectives from geographical names, names of nationalities or languages are not capitalized, nor are days of the week and months of the year.
Writing words together and separately The following words are written together: • prefixed words, such as ; • adverbs ending in , such as ; • compound words from verbs and nouns, such as ; • the conjunction ('because') and the noun ('reason'); • indefinite pronouns such as ; • combinations of verbs with enclitic pronouns, such as 'delivering it to me' from 'delivering' + 'me' + 'it'. The following word combinations are written separately: • compound adverbs such as ; • the interrogative ('why'); • combinations of prefixes and word combinations: (but , ). Coordinated compound adjectives are written with a hyphen: .
Syllabification Spanish words are divided into syllables using the following rules: 1. A vowel between two consonants always ends the first syllable and the second consonant begins another:
pá-ja-ro. Put differently, if a vowel follows a consonant, the consonant, not the vowel, must begin the new syllable. 2. If a vowel is followed by two consonants, the syllables divide between the consonants:
can-tar, ver-ter, án-da-le. However,
ch, ll, rr and combinations of
b, c, d, f, g, k, p, t plus
r or
l do not divide:
pe-rro, lu-char, ca-lle, pro-gra-ma, ha-blar. Exceptionally,
r and
l after a consonant can begin a new syllable in prefixed or compound words:
sub-ra-yar, sub-lu-nar, ciu-dad-re-a-le-ño. 3. Two vowels may form a hiatus or a diphthong (see the section "
Stress and accentuation" above):
pa-e-lla, puen-te, ra-íz. Three vowels may sometimes form a triphthong:
es-tu-diáis. 4. The silent
h is not taken into account when syllabifying words. Two vowels separated by an
h may form a hiatus or a diphthong:
ahu-mar, de-sahu-cio, bú-ho. The combination
tl in the middle of words may be divided into syllables in two ways:
at-le-ta or
a-tle-ta, corresponding to the pronunciations [að̞ˈle.t̪a] (more common in Spain) and [aˈt̪le.t̪a] (more common in Hispanic America). These rules are used for hyphenating words at the end of line, with the following additional rules: 1. One letter is not hyphenated. So, the word is syllabified
a-bue-lo, but the only way to hyphenate it at the end of a line is
abue-lo. 2. Hiatuses are not divided at the end of line. So, the word is syllabified as
pa-e-lla, but the only way to hyphenate it at the end of a line is
pae-lla. This rule includes hiatuses with an intervening silent
h: is syllabified as
al-co-hol, but the only way to hyphenate it at the end of a line is
al-cohol. On the other hand, the name contains a pronounced
h, so the hyphenation
Mo-hamed is accepted. See also rule 3 containing an exception to this rule. 3. Prefixed and compound words may be divided phonetically (corresponding to the above rules) or morphologically (the border between morphemes is considered a border between syllables):
bie-nestar or
bien-estar,
inte-racción or
inter-acción,
reins-talar or
re-instalar. This rule is not valid: a) for compounds in which one part is not used as an independent word:
pun-tiagudo (not *
punti-agudo); b) for words with unproductive prefixes:
arzo-bispo (not *
arz-obispo); c) for words containing etymological prefixes not determined as such by surface analysis:
adhe-sivo (not *
ad-hesivo). 4. Unusual combinations containing the letter
h are not permitted at the beginning of a line:
sulfhí-drico (not *
sul-fhídrico),
brah-mán (not *
bra-hmán). The letter
x between vowels phonetically represents two consonants separated by a syllable border, but hyphenation at the end of line is permitted before the
x:
ta-xi, bo-xeo. Words written with hyphen are hyphenated by repeating the hyphen on the following line:
teórico-/-práctico. Repeating the hyphen is not necessary if the hyphenated word is a proper name where a hyphen is followed by a capital letter.
Abbreviations, symbols, acronyms Abbreviations are written with the period: for . Contractions are written in the same way: for , or sometimes using superscript letters: for . Hyphenating abbreviations (including contractions) at the end of line is not allowed and putting them in separate lines with terms they accompany is not allowed. Abbreviations are not capitalized if the original word is written in lowercase, but there are some traditional exceptions: or for , for . Rarely, abbreviations are written using the slash: for , for . One-letter abbreviations are pluralized by doubling the letter: for . More-than-one-letter abbreviations are pluralized by adding
s: for . The ending is used for contractions if it appears in the corresponding complete word: for . Traditional exceptions: the plural of () is , that of () and () is , and that of or () is or Letter symbols such as those of chemical elements or measurement units are written following international conventions and do not require the abbreviation period: H (), kg (). For some notions, Spanish-specific symbols are used: O ( 'west'), sen ( 'sine').
Acronyms are written in all capitals and read by letters ( for , 'non-governmental organization') or as words ( for ). Some acronyms read as words are written as normal words, including proper names of more than four letters such as
, or common nouns such as . Some acronyms read by letters may also be spelled according to their pronunciation: . Acronyms written in all capitals are not pluralized in writing, but they are pluralized in speech: [las o.e.neˈxes] 'the non-governmental organizations'.
Numerals Numbers may be written in words (
, , ...) or in figures (1, 2, 3, ...). For the
decimal separator, the comma and the point are both accepted (3,1416 or 3.1416); the decimal comma is preferred in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, but the decimal point is preferred in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Both marks are used in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, and El Salvador. For the thousands separator, the currently standard mark is the thin space (123 456 789). Formerly, the point was sometimes used, but now it is not recommended. When written in words, numbers up to 30 are nowadays written as a single word, e.g. , . The corresponding ordinal numbers may be written as a single word or separately, e.g. () or (). Numbers more than 30 (cardinal and ordinal) are usually written separately, e.g. , , but one-word spellings such as , are also accepted by the current . Whole hundreds are also written as single words, e.g. . Fractionary numbers such as are written as a single word. Daytime is written in the 24-hour format, using the colon (18:45) or the point (18.45). Dates are expressed in the day-month-year format, with the following options possible: 8 de mayo de 2015; 8-5-2015; 8-5-15; 8/5/2015; 8.5.2015; 8-V-2015. Leading zeros in the day and the month (08.05.2015) are not used, except in computerized or bank documents. Roman numerals (I, II, III, ...) are used for centuries (e.g. ''
) and for regnal numbers (e.g. Luis XIV
). Roman or Arabic numerals may be used for historical dynasties (e.g. or ); volumes, chapters, or other parts of books (e.g. ,
3.º, 3.er
, or 3
); celebrations (e.g. , or ...''). Roman numerals are typeset in
small capitals if they would not be capitalized when written in words. ==History==