It's official: The Spanish alphabet now has 27 letters. Despite Internet campaigns and objections from language purists, delegates to a Spanish Royal Academy gathering in Guadalajara, Mexico, over the weekend ratified proposed changes to written Spanish, which included removing ch and ll from the alphabet.
The change will have little practical effect, since the ch and ll will continue to have distinct pronunciations, and the letters hadn't been used for alphabetization purposes for decades.
Two other recommendations on the alphabet also were made: The v will now be known as the uve instead of ve, which was already the case in some regions, and the y may be known as the ye along with the traditional name of i griega.
Other changes involved the dropping of mandatory written accents in words such as guión (hyphen) and sólo when used as an adverb — although such accents will not be considered wrong and likely will be used in many publications. Also, under the new recommendations, plurals of abbreviations should not include an s at the end, so the plural of la ONG (for la organización no gubernamental) becomes las ONG (this usage has long been common). Also, ex may now be used as a prefix in words such as exsenador for "former senator"; previously, it would have been written as ex senador.
Comments
Aunque creo que los cambios dichos arriba confundirán a varias personas, todavía creo que van a mejorar el idioma en general.
This article conjures an important question in my mind. Since Spanish is updated much more often than English, how quickly (or even likely?) do people incorporate these changes into their lives? Do Spanish teachers immediately rework their lessons? and is the average Joe on his toes to what the Academy is deciding?
I think it is a great idea to try and simplify Spanish.
Language is dynamic and always changing, so everyone should be working to make it more generic and simpler.
Maybe English could do with some cleaning up as well!
Sure Craig, we’ll just let Nancy Pelosi do it for us. But we’ll have to wait for the bill to be passed by congress before we get to see what changes to the english language are inside.
These are not even real changes! Many people already talk with these “modifications”. The Spanish alphabet has already been like this ever since like 2002. They should specify which “Spanish alphabet” was updated this way.
It is going to get too complicated for people who already know spanish. People who were born and learned Spanish are going to get too confused. Also how is lluvia going to be spelled and chivas going to be spelled. Think about it. And let me know to start learning Spanish again.
A friend told me about it and just checked it today. I don’t think it is a big deal, since dropping those two letters of the Spanish alphabet, will make no change in the way we use it, I hope. We will continue using the combination of “ch” and “ll” so indicating them in the alphabet or not, makes no difference to me. What really concerns me is the trying to do things easier and easier for the people to learn something, in Spanish or English.
Is this really an improvement or is making the people use less and less of their brain? The re-inventing the language is great, but re-inventing it to turn it into several “dialects” with so many different ways people talk and write today, is really going to create chaos in the future. In Spanish as in English is the same thing. There is nothing like the enjoyment of reading a piece of well written English or Spanish, with new words that are not so common.
I personally enjoy the challenge of adding words that exist today and never use, than re-invting new ones. It doesn’t make sense other than stopping, the way people use their brain, from growing. It is going to be like cuando ahora las personas no pueden dar cambio en las tiendas o vender algo si no tienen una calculadora a la mano. El mundo se detiene para ellos .
Translating: It is going to be like when people cannot make “change” or sell at stores during a power outage if they do not have a calculator at hand. The world stops for them”
There are more changes than just these! The language is being changed to resemble English more and more. (non-pluralization of adjectives describing plural nouns for example) The only reason one can come up with is that “they” are preparing Mexico (and other Spanish speakers) for the North American Union. If you don’t know about this, Google it … then read it and weep. It’s almost ready to be instigated, and EVERYONE in the US, Canada and Mexico needs to know about it and do what can be done to stop it from happening. TRULY EDUCATE YOURSELVES and pull your heads out of the sand. This is real and it’s very frightening. It happened in Europe; let’s not let it happen here.
What is the matter with Mexico becoming part of the North American Union. Mexico is part of North America anyway, and it will only open the doors for more oppurtinitys in Mexico. I myself can not wait for that unification.
Personally, having learned spanish as my first language, i dont like the changes making it more like english. I grew up saying the alphabet with “LL” and “CH”. I don’t like the idea of being Lcorrected by spanish teachers for the way i speak (the “old” way) in the future. Whats the point of diversety of language if they’re trying to make all other languages like english! Oh, and i guess they’ll just have to re-teach spanish speakers, because how they know is “wrong”!