[lg policy] question about Spanish orthography reform

Thu Dec 2 15:51:57 UTC 2010

Reminds me of the digraphs in Welsh:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_orthography

Dave

--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow
School of the Environment and Society
Swansea University
dave.sayers at cantab.net
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers

On 19:59, David Pardo Cossío wrote:
> Dear Harold,
>
> Ch and Ll were different letters, so that before, in dictionaries, we 
> had words starting by Ch a part from and after those starting with C; 
> and we had also words starting by Ll a part from and after those 
> starting by L.
>
> It has been already for some years that Ch has been added to C and Ll 
> to L... like in English and other languages.
>
> However, ñ continues being a different letter, after n and before o.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Regards from Hong Kong.
>
> David Pardo.
>
> ______________________________________________
>
> Diverses són les parles i diversos els homes,
> i convindran molts noms a un sol amor
>
> (La pell de brau, Salvador Espriu).
>
> --- El *mié, 1/12/10, Harold Schiffman /<hfsclpp at gmail.com>/* escribió:
>
>
>     De: Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp at gmail.com>
>     Asunto: [lg policy] question about Spanish orthography reform
>     Para: "lp" <lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu>
>     Fecha: miércoles, 1 de diciembre, 2010 18:54
>
>     Hi, All:
>
>     A couple of days ago I sent this message about Spanish orthography
>     reform to this list, but
>     not being an expert on Spanish, I had a few questions.  In the
>     article, it refers to
>     'ch' and 'll' as single "letters" that are being removed from the
>     Spanish alphabet, which will annoy people like
>     Hugo Chavez, whose family name begins with ch, reducing his name
>     to Avez.
>
>     This sounds idiotic to me--even if 'ch' and 'll' are gone, people will
>     presumably still
>     have a regular c, an h, and an l that they can use 2 of, to write
>     Spanish correctly.
>     Is this whole business just a popular misconception?  A false
>     interprettion of what
>     the Spanish academy has done?
>
>     Help me, I'm confused!
>
>     HS
>
>     Rebelling Against Spain, This Time With Words
>     By ELISABETH MALKIN
>     MEXICO CITY — The Royal Spanish Academy is lopping two letters off the
>     Spanish alphabet, reducing it to 27.
>
>     Out go “ch” and “ll,” along with lots of annoying accents and hyphens.
>
>     The simplified spelling from the academy, a musty Madrid institution
>     that is the chief arbiter of all things grammatical, should be welcome
>     news to the world’s 450 million Spanish-speakers, not to mention
>     anybody struggling to learn the language. But no. Everyone, it seems,
>     has a bone to pick with the academy — starting with President Hugo
>     Chávez of Venezuela.  If the academy no longer considers “ch” a
>     separate letter, Mr. Chávez chortled to his cabinet, then he would
>     henceforth be known simply as “Ávez.” (In fact, his name will stay the
>     same, though his place in the alphabetic order will change, because
>     “ch” used to be the letter after “c.”)
>
>     An editorial in the Mexican daily El Universal declared the new rules
>     to be an affront to the national identity: “Spelling is not just an
>     imposition; it serves to maintain a minimum of coherence and sense to
>     what is written and said. Can this be dictated from a conference room
>     abroad? A country that is proudly independent would not accept this.”
>     The editorial went on to ask, “Would the United States accept dictates
>     from England over the use of English?”  They are just as upset on the
>     European side of the Atlantic. Comments have poured forth on the Web —
>     1,450 of them as of Thursday night — after the first article on the
>     changes appeared in the Spanish newspaper El País at the beginning of
>     the month. The word “absurdo” pops up a lot.
>
>     “It’s kind of a magic realist moment. They decide that 2 of 29 letters
>     will disappear,” said Ilan Stavans, a Mexican who is a professor of
>     Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. “All the
>     dictionaries will have to be remade, which is good for selling the
>     Royal Academy’s dictionary, which they keep producing as though it’s
>     the Bible.”  Professor Stavans compared it to the authority that
>     English-speakers turn to, the Oxford English Dictionary, which
>     stresses common usage rather than imposing it from above.
>
>     The Spanish academy needed 800 pages to explain the new simplified
>     rules. Among other changes: letters with different names in different
>     countries get just one name (which is rather like telling Americans
>     that the last letter of the alphabet should be called “zed”). Iraq
>     becomes Irak and quásar is now written as cuásar.
>
>     The spelling rules will go on sale by Christmas in Spain. Latin
>     Americans will have to wait a bit longer.
>
>     There have long been complaints about Spanish spelling. At the first
>     international congress of the Spanish language in Zacatecas, Mexico,
>     in 1997, the Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García
>     Márquez declared, “Let’s retire spelling, the terror of all beings
>     from the cradle.” But he admitted that his pleas were little more than
>     “bottles flung to the sea in the hope that they would one day come to
>     the god of all words.”
>
>     That god remaining silent, the Royal Spanish Academy has been filling
>     the void since it was founded in 1713. “They have an oracular way of
>     presenting things, like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai,” Professor
>     Stavans said.
>
>     “In my mind, it’s a relic of the 18th century,” he added. “We have to
>     wait for Spain to say how we speak.”
>
>     For those who live and breathe Spanish, the academy’s priorities seem
>     a little off. “We are a language in debate,” said the Mexican writer
>     Paco Ignacio Taibo II. “Unfortunately, the academy isn’t ahead of the
>     debate, it’s behind.”
>
>     To its credit, the academy takes pains to emphasize that it works
>     collaboratively with its associated academies in 21 other
>     Spanish-speaking countries, including in the United States. Early
>     meetings on the new spelling rules were held in Chile; the text was
>     completed this month in Spain; and it will be ratified by the academy
>     and its sister branches at the Guadalajara Book Fair in Mexico on
>     Sunday.
>
>     In an e-mail, Juan Villoro, a Mexican writer living in Barcelona, was
>     philosophical about one change that seemed to strike at the core of
>     Spanish speakers’ poetic souls on both sides of the Atlantic. Under
>     the old rules, the word “solo” takes an accent when it means “only”
>     and has no accent when it means “alone.”
>
>     The academy rubbed out the accent, arguing that the meaning would be
>     clear from the context. “Sometimes, the law has nothing to do with
>     justice,” Mr. Villoro wrote.
>
>     Luis Fernando Lara, a scholar at the Colegio de México who coordinates
>     the preparation of a Spanish dictionary used in Mexico, waved off the
>     academy’s new rules: “We’re free in this world not to listen to them.”
>
>     As for the changes in the names of letters, Mr. Lara resorted to a
>     line from a classic American song to describe the spat:
>
>     “I like tomato, you like tomahto,” he said.
>
>     Although he did not say it, the title of that tune, written by George
>     and Ira Gershwin, was understood:
>
>     “Let’s call the whole thing off.”
>
>     http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/world/europe/26spanish.html?_r=1&sq=rebelling
>     <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/world/europe/26spanish.html?_r=1&sq=rebelling>
>     against spain&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
>
>     -- 
>     **************************************
>     N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
>     its members
>     and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
>     or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents.
>     Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal,
>     and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.
>     A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman,
>     Moderator)
>
>     For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
>     https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
>     listinfo/lgpolicy-list
>     *******************************************
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
>     lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
>     </mc/compose?to=lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu>
>     To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format:
>     https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20101202/a13bd0f6/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list