Misspelled Spanish Words.

Question

This is a question mostly for native speakers, though anyone can chime in their opinion. I've noticed, especially in online chatting or text messaging, that many words are misspelled, such as "kiero (quiero), fuersa (fuerza), e echo (he hecho), estube (estuve), saver (saber), etc." Spanish is way easier to spell than English, which leads me to believe that they might just be misspelling words on purpose. Obviously sometimes people just make mistakes, but is that just common texting practice to misspell words on purpose?

Good question, I'm interested to hear what natives might say. Out of these I've seen kiero and it looks like the economy of speech principle in practice. Interesting stuff :) - Manity, Mar 11, 2013

Great mate , and thanks for making me even more confused and paranoid , good post tho. - ray76, Mar 11, 2013

Answer 1

Sometimes is just for mistake but sometimes it's on purpose. For example people that write "kiero" or "qiero" most likely do it on purpose, but people that write "fuersa", that was surely a mistake. Also when people write dsp they mean después, tmb they mean también. Some word that are misspelled in spanish on purpose are:

tdo = todo

x = por

no c = no sé

ke/qe = que

People usually write so when they are chatting or sending a text message to 'save time' or simply because they want to I guess. There are many people who change the letter Y for the I. Hoy = hoi, Oye = oie

Answer 2

As several have commented here, when texting, chatting online, etc. a number of shortcuts are often used like tmb for tambien. Those are not true misspellings. In general there are a few sounds (phonemes) in Spanish which can be spelled two or three ways. These are where misspellings tend to occur, especially when there are homophones such as "casa" house and "caza" hunt. Here is a list of the most common cases of this: 1) Words spelled with and without h 2) Words which make the /s/ sound spelled with s, c, or z (sa, se, si, so, su; ce, ci; za, ze, zi, zo, zu) 3) Words spelled with b or v 4) Words spelled with the soft /g/ sound spelled with j or g (ja. je, ji, jo, ju; ge, gi) 5) Words spelled with y or ll

To a degree, this also depends on the dialect of Spanish one speaks. For example, Madrileños (people from Madrid) pronounce z like a th, eg. thapato for zapato. They therefore never spell this word meaning shoe as "sapato" whereas Spanish speakers from other places might do so as they pronounce it with the s sound.

Well stated. A lot of hispanos, due to economic conditions never get a chance to go beyond the 2nd or 3rd grade in school. That is also one reason for the mistakes. - Daniela2041, Feb 22, 2017

Welcome to SpanishDict. This thread is from 2013. I don't think they are still looking for answers, but thank you for your input. - rac1, Feb 23, 2017

Answer 3

, but is that just common texting practice to misspell words on purpose?

Absolutely, just like many young people text here (and me too, for that matter). It was really confusing to me at first, because I have a fair number of young racer friends and clients, who use it a lot. What I do seem to notice, is more of the texting abbreviations carrying over to facebook, in Spanish, and compared to English. Otoh, if you look at the statistics and see the relatively large percentage of latin America that has mobile devices as their primary means of accessing the web,, then even that begins to make sense. The less typing from tiny keyboards, the better. And more recently, in my class this semester, there's even a section in the very new textbook on messaging abbreviations common in Spanish. Kiero y xke y tmb are the ones I see the most. Oh, and m y t.

Answer 4

Yes, that is extremely common, I picked up on the same thing myself.

The advantage of Spanish is that things are spelled exactly as they sound. The disadvantage of Spanish is that things are spelled exactly as they sound.

Just like texting in English, some people do things on purpose, like kiero instead of of quiero. or porq instead of por que. And typing on a cell phone is not exactly easy either.

But sometimes people make mistakes like haber instead of "a ver". They sound the same, and if you've never seen it written, how would you know the difference? I've run into this on several occasions myself, misspelling things based on the way the sound. Another one I've seen a lot aser instead of hacer.

And of course there's also the obvious, some people just weren't paying attention in school. And honestly, if you chat enough in English, you'll notice the same things happen.

Answer 5

This is a very interesting topic. I found this webpage that offers an insight into why there are misspellings in text messaging.

The website: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/spanish-lesson-plans/110943-texting-in-the-spanish-language/