Learning the alphabet in spanish. Confused!

Question

In my Spanish 1 class we learned "Ch" . Now that I am looking into things I found that many people don't use Ch but only C. Why is this? Is it used in Mexican Spanish? I plan on living in Mexico, so my main focus is learning Mexican Spanish. Is there anything else I should know about?

Answer 1

Ch was considered a separate letter at one time, but now we have C and H separately, so instead of say saying "che" as in the past, we now must say the two letters alone: ce, hache.

RR and LL were also leters in the past, but we now just say them twice, ie: "Calle" ce.a. ele.ele. e

This is not a regional thing, but a change in the Spanish usage by the RAE. If your teacher is using ch as a letter, then he/she is not up to date although this will not cause any misunderstandings among native speakers.

Thank, Julian, I didn't know about "rr". - Jubilado, Aug 29, 2013

Answer 2

When I learned it 50 years ago it was a, be (grande, larga, alta), ce, che, de, e, efe, ge, hache, i, jota, ka, ele, elle, eme, ene, eñe, o, pe, cu, ere, erre, ese, te, u, ve (be chica) (now called uve), ve (uve) doble, equis, i griega, zeta

According to an article the RAE (la Real Academia Española) which sets the rules of acceptable Spanish usage: La i griega será ye, la b será be (y no be alta o be larga); la ch y la ll dejan de ser letras del alfabeto.

Here's a link to the article in Spanish which mentions other changes made in the language:

La "i griega" se llamará "ye"

y is no longer i griega. What? "Ye" makes sense but it's just weird. Why'd they change it? - HackerKing, Aug 29, 2013

Answer 3

I traslated this:

A digraph is a group of two letters representing a single sound. Some of these digraphs correspond to sounds not represented by a single letter in the appropriate language.

En castellano se emplean cinco dígrafos: «ch», «ll», «rr», «gu» y «qu»,

In short it's the union of two letter of the alphabet.

Are many words with this letters:

Chorizo, chuleta, hacha, macho Lluvia, llave, llama, pollo, malla Carrera, correr, lavarropas, morral, marrón.

I hope this helps.

Regards.

Sometimes in spoken Spanish "bu" is a digraph that sounds like "gu", correct? - Jubilado, Aug 29, 2013

Mmmm maybe you say that because heard the word "Güey". When it's "Buey". Aquí en México es común entre algunas personas llamarse "Güey", "Wey", "We", pero siempre y cuando se tengan demasiada confianza, pero no es algo formal. - 007e54d7, Aug 29, 2013

De hecho es muy informal. And "Bu" I think is not a digraph. :) Regards. - 007e54d7, Aug 29, 2013

Answer 4

Here's the Spanish alphabet I have learned: a ah, b bveh, c say, d deh, e eh, f eh-fay, g Heh, h ah-cheh, i ee, j Hoh-tah, k kah, l eh-lay, m eh-may, n eh-nay, ñ eh-nyeh, o oh, p pay, q coo, r eh-ray, s eh-say, t teh, u oo, v bveh, w doble-way or doble-oo, x eh-kees, y ee-gray-gah, z say-tah

As you can see, the letters are not called the same as in English, but there's no Ch. However, English uses "ch" as in chair and many other words. So does Spanish.

Good luck, dear! I hope a Mexican provides more help for you.