How many letters are there in spanish?
How many letters are there in spanish?
4 Answers
How well can you count in Spanish?
Actually the numbers of letters have changed recently. See article below.
Interesting topic, actually. I'll date myself by saying that when I first started learning Spanish ch, ll, ñ and rr were considered separate letters, and dictionaries reflected it. The "C" section went ce-ci, skipping ch, and ch came between "C" and "D".
The story I heard about ñ was that it was originally a double letter like ll and rr, but, to save space in expensive manuscripts they started writing the 2nd "n" above the first one instead of beside it. This got squashed over time to the modern tilde shape.
I don't know how they can take "K" and "W" out of the alphabet. They are used for foreign words, but they are used.
Soninmyeyes, (cute pun),
The gist of it is, that, as of yet, there is no consistency. Listen to this YouTube recitation and you will see that che (ch) is still listed as a separate letter, ll (elle) is not and rr ( erre...we called it erre doble when I was in school) is.
No one I've spoken with here in México counts ch and ll as separate letters, though, and they don't recite them with the alphabet. (This I discovered very soon after I got here... fortunately before I embarrassed myself!)
