Which Letters Are in the Spanish Alphabet

The Spanish alphabet is easy to learn — it differs by only one letter from the English alphabet. According to the  Real Academia Espaà ±ola  or Royal Spanish Academy,  the Spanish alphabet has 27 letters. The Spanish language coincides with the English alphabet in its entirety with one additional letter, à ±: A: aB: beC: ceD: deE: eF: efeG: geH: hacheI: iJ: jotaK: kaL: eleM: emeN eneÑ: eà ±eO: oP: peQ: cuR: ere (or erre)S: eseT: teU: uV: uveW: uve doble, doble veX: equisY: yeZ: zeta 2010 Alphabet Update Although the Spanish alphabet has 27 letters, that wasnt always the case. In 2010, a number of changes occurred to the Spanish alphabet under the leadership of the Royal Spanish Academy, a semiofficial arbiter of the language. Prior to 2010, the Spanish alphabet had 29 letters. The  Real Academia Espaà ±ola  had included  ch and ll as officially recognized letters. They have distinct pronunciations, much like ch does in English. When the Spanish alphabet was updated,  ch  and ll were dropped from the alphabet. For years, when  ch  was considered a separate letter, it would affect the alphabetical order in dictionaries. For example, the word  achatar, meaning to flatten, would be listed after  acordar, meaning  to agree. This caused considerable confusion. Spanish dictionaries changed alphabetical ordering rules to resemble English dictionaries even before  ch  was officially dropped as a  letter.  The only distinction was that  Ãƒ ±Ã‚  came after  n in dictionaries. Another substantial update included the actual name change of three letters. Prior to 2010, the  y  was formally called  y  griega  (Greek  y) to distinguish it from  the  i  or  i  latina  (Latin  i). During the 2010 update, it was officially changed to ye. Also, the names for  b  and  v, pronounced  be  and  ve, which had been pronounced identically, received an update. To differentiate, the b continued to be pronounced be  and the v was changed in pronunciation to uve.   Over the years, since disambiguation between b and v had been difficult in speech, native language speakers developed colloquialisms as cues. For example, a b might be referred to as  be grande,  big B, and the  V  as  ve chica,  little V. Long before 2010, there was debate over a few others letters, such as w and k, which arent  found in native Spanish words. Due to an infusion of borrowed words from other languages — words as varied as haiku and kilowatt —  use of these letters became common and accepted. Use of Accents and Special Marks Some letters are written with diacritical marks. Spanish uses three diacritical marks:  an accent mark, a dieresis, and tilde. Many vowels use accents, such as  tablà ³n, meaning plank, or  rà ¡pido, meaning fast. Usually, the accent is used to add stress on a syllables pronunciation.  In special cases, the letter  u is sometimes topped with a dieresis or what appears to be a German umlaut, as in the word  vergà ¼enza, meaning shame. The dieresis changes the u sound to the English w sound.A  tilde  is used to distinguish  n  from  Ãƒ ±. An example of a word using a tilde is  espaà ±ol, the word for Spanish. Although the à ± is a letter separate from the n, vowels with accents or diereses arent considered different letters. Clues to Spelling Spanish-English Cognates Spanish has an abundance of English cognates, that is words that have the same origin as English words and are frequently spelled similarly. The differences and similarities in spelling sometimes follow predictable patterns: In words of Greek origin where ch has the k sound in English and Spanish, Spanish usually uses qu. Examples: arquitectura (architecture), quà ­mico (chemical).When English uses gn pronounced as ny, in Spanish the à ± is used. Examples: campaà ±a (campaign), filete mià ±on (filet mignon).Foreign words with a k in English that have been imported to Spanish tend to retain the k, but a qu or c is sometimes used. Examples: kayak (kayak), koala (koala). But the word for kiosk can be spelled as either quiosco or kiosco. Key Takeaways The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters and is the same as the English alphabet with the addition of à ±.Spanish often uses diacritical marks over vowels, but a marked vowel is not considered a separate letter as the à ± is.Until the alphabet reform of 2010, ch and ll used to be classified as separate letters.