Spanish alphabet

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Spanish alphabet is a Latin alphabet of 27 letters used to write the Spanish language. It has the same letters as the ISO Basic Latin Alphabet with the additional letter Ñ, which is named "Eñe" (pronounced EN-yay). In addition to letters, the alphabet also uses accent marks to mark stressed syllables. The Spanish alphabet is fairly phonemic, which means words are usually spelled the way the sound. While different accents exist in Spanish like with any living language, pronunciation is usually fits well with spelling.

The letter combinations "CH", "LL" and "RR" used to be included as letters of the Spanish alphabet and sorted by themselves in dictionaries (but not "RR," since no Spanish words begin with "RR"), and thus the Spanish alphabet used to contain 30 letters until they were removed. They are no longer letters of the Spanish alphabet and are now just letter combinations with their own sounds. The letter K is limited in Spanish and mostly only occurs in foreign words borrowed from other languages. There are, however, some native Spanish words that do begin with the letter K (e.g. Kilo, Kilogramo, Kilómetro, etc.), and the letter W does not appear in original Spanish words, only in foreign words borrowed from other languages, and thus is hardly almost ever used in Spanish at all.