Changes to the R A E
In another thread Lorenzo mentioned that the Real Academia Española (R A E) was making some spelling changes to the alphabet.
I found this article, which says that there have been several initiatives to reform the spelling of Spanish (such as changing -ge- and -gi to -je- and ji), and dropping the "h" altogether, but that no changes were made.
Then I found this article, which says that last year the R A E dropped the "ch" and "ll" from the alphabet. Moreover, the the letter "v" is now called the "uve" instead of "ve", and the "y" can be called either "ye" or "i griega."
Can anyone tell me what other proposed changes are out there? Thank you.
6 Answers
Ch and ll are no longer letters, but digraphs. Most dictionaries have been including these digraphs under the letters c and l (including the RAE)
In order to unify and simplify the ortography, the RAE recommends that the letters b, v and y are called be, uve and ye, but they also say that people are free to use the traditional names they have been using all their lives.
The written accent no longer has to be used with the demonstratives esto/a, eso/a, aquello/a, and solo, even if there is a potential ambiguity, although its these cases it is acceptable to use the accent.
The diacritic accent is no longer used between numbers, so just type "3 o 5".
"Guion" and "truhan" are not written as "guión" or "truhán", even though the DRAE hasn't updated its own dictionary, and many people pronounce it as "gui.ón", so that the general rules systematically apply to all words, since not all speakers pronounce exactly the same way anyway. It may not reflect the exact pronunciation, but it removes exceptions in the system.
Prefixes like "anti" and "pro" are now written together with the word (e.g. antidroga, exmujer), unless they are used with acronyms or complex expressions.
They recommend that the q is written on its own to transcribe semitic names, so it is better to write Irak and Catar than Iraq and Qatar.
Foreign terms should be written in italics if their spelling does not conform to the Spanish one, but not those that have been adapted, like balé instead of ballet.
The changes to which you are referring were introduced in the most recent edition (2010) of Ortografía de la lengua española which you can find online for about fifteen dollars.
A while back, El País did an article listing some of the changes that were to take effect. There were also several follow up articles (a few of which) you can read here, here and here.
I learned in school that W is uve doble (or even ve doble), but a lot of people I've talked with say it as doble u, probably because of the influence of English. I don't which one is the standard nowadays, but I use them rather indiscriminately, or at least I shift from one term to another in order to be understood.
Lazarus said:
Prefixes like "anti" and "pro" are now written together with the word (e.g. antidroga, exmujer)....
Yes! I noticed this recently in newspapers. Instead of "ex presidente" they are now using "expresidente." I didn't know that it was official; I just thought that people write it different ways.
Lazarus said:
The diacritic tilde is no longer used between numbers, so just type "3 o 5".
Do you mean that it used to be written like this:
3 ~ 5
to indicate that the number was 3 or 5?
In some languages (though not English), a tilde-like wavy dash may be used as punctuation (instead of an unspaced hyphen or en-dash) between two numbers, to indicate a range rather than subtraction or a hyphenated number (such as a part number or model number). For example, 12~15 means "12 to 15", ~3 means "up to three" and 100~ means "100 and greater".
I'm glad that ge and gi weren't changed. I've already learned how things are spelled and changing it would bug me forever! Imagine if "gente" became "jente" or "inteligente" became "intelijente". That just wouldn't work for me haha 
