The Spanish Writing System

The Spanish writing system is based on the 26-letter Latin alphabet with the addition of the letter ñ. The letters k and w are only found in Spanish words "loaned" from other languqages.¹

According to Wikipedia Spanish orthography is the writing system for the  Spanish language. It is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes.

Unlike its Proto-Western Romance cousin French, Spanish is fairly harmonious when it comes to its orthography and word pronunciations. Spanish speakers have an easy time determining how to pronounce words based on how they are spelled. Below are some of the main features of the Spanish writing system:

• Like English, interrogatory or exclamatory clauses are punctuated with a question mark or exclamation point at the end; however, Spanish also places an inverted question mark or exclamation point at the beginning of these clauses - for example, ¿Qué dices? (What do you mean?). Spanish is unusual in its use of this convention.
• Vowels are marked with acute accents (á, é, í, ó, ú) to indicate a stress pattern that may be out of the ordinary; or, they may be used to set apart two words that are essentially spelled the same.²
• Spanish has three sounds which are represented by digraphs: ch, ll and rr. In the past the Spanish writing system had alphabetized these letter combinations differently from other European languages; however, this convention was dropped in 1994 and words beginning with these letter combinations are now alphabetized in the same way as English, German, etc.³
• Spanish sometimes uses the dieresis ü after g to indicate different word pronunciations.

Spanish Alphabet

For additional information on the Spanish writing system, you can check out the following resources on the Web at:

• http://www.omniglot.com/writing/spanish.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Language
• http://www.rae.es/

1.      "Spanish (Español)" Omniglot: A Guide to Writing Systems
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/spanish.htm
[Accessed November 11, 2004]

2.      "Spanish alphabet" Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_alphabet
[Accessed December 14, 2004]

3.      "Spanish Language" Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Language#Writing_system
[Accessed December 14, 2004]

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For information on The Spanish language and Spanish translation, please see our Spanish Translation Pages.

You may also check out our Spanish Translation Services for complete information in Chinese Language.