Spanish words with unusual spelling
When I went to a Spanish language class I was taught that the 4 letters capitalised in CaRoLiNa could be a very useful reminder that only the 4 letters can appear doubled up in Spanish words. Some examples are:
cc - dirección, lección
rr - perro, cerrar
ll - llave, pollo
nn – connotar, innato
Carolina is very useful in spelling exercises, for example, words with double m in English are never spelt with double m in Spanish, similarly the rule applies to dd, ff, pp, ss etc. But recently I have come across several words in Spanish that do not conform to CaRoLiNa.
Examples:
la sobreexplotación - over-exploitation
la contraataca - counter-attack
la brosse - brush (p.83 Dorling Kindersley Bilingual English Spanish Visual Dictionary)
el puzzle - jigsaw puzzle (p.273 Ibid)
Have you come across any other Spanish words with double letters apart from C R L and N ?
8 Answers
la sobreexplotación - over-exploitation
What is unusual about this spelling? There is no double consonant anywhere.
la contraataca - counter-attack
I doubt that is a word. It should be "el contraataque", and again, it has no double consonants. Shall I assume that you've been told that vowels cannot be duplicated for some strange reason? Because they can.
la brosse - brush (p.83 Dorling Kindersley Bilingual English Spanish Visual Dictionary)
La... what? What is that? Where is that used? I'd bet they used the same template for French and they forgot to replace that FRENCH word with a Spanish one.
el puzzle - jigsaw puzzle (p.273 Ibid)
Again, that's an English word with English spelling, like Pizza (which is Italian)
Have you come across any other Spanish words with double letters apart from C R L and N ?
You can find double s in Spanish words, but they are always of foreign origin (or Latin expressions): affaire (French), appeal (English), baghette (French), dossier (French), gamma (Greek), gauss (German), hippie (English), jacuzzi (English), jazz (English), lobby (English), pizza (Italian), mozzarella (Italina), reggae (English), motocross (French+Engish), paparazzi (Italian), sheriff (English), watt (Englihs), vendetta (Italian), topless (English).
How about cooperación ?
Mmmm, the combinations aa, oo and ii are not as frequent as others, but they are not strange to a Spanish native.
These combinations appear mostly in compound words, such as contraalmirante, contraaviso, portaaviones, semiinconsciente, antiinflamatorio, antiimperialista, coordinar, cooficial, microondas,... All words that can be created with contra- can give you aa, all words with semi- can give you ii, and all words with micro- can give you oo.
You can get ii with diminutivos too: tiita, tonteriita,...
simple word: leer
How about cooperación ?
This is a great way to remember that the general rule is that only C, R, L, and N are doubled in Spanish.
Thanks!!
The doubling up of unnatural letters (ones that dont fit CaRoLiNe) are usually from foreign words. Words like puzzle, Reggaeton or Zoológico.
Spanish is a phonetic language, so besides the confusion similar phonemes pose for many, I don't think we can talk about "unusual" spellings; well, maybe for "extranjerismos".
Proveer
Zoológico
