[lg policy] question about Spanish orthography reform

Thu Dec 2 16:13:31 UTC 2010

Same thing in Slovak and Czech where 'ch' is considered a separate letter,
except in our languages, it comes after 'h'. Predictably, localization and
especially sorting algorithms are a mess.

b.

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 16:51, Dave Sayers <dave.sayers at cantab.net> wrote:

>  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><hfsclpp at gmail.com>
> * escribió:
>
>
> De: Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp at gmail.com> <hfsclpp at gmail.com>
> Asunto: [lg policy] question about Spanish orthography reform
> Para: "lp" <lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu><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
> against spain&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
>
> --
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