The Spanish Alphabet – El Alfabeto en Español

When you ask a Spanish speaker, how many letters does the Spanish Alphabet have? The Answer will vary depending on who you ask.  Some say 30, others 29, but the official number of letters by the Real Academia Española is 27 letters.

Before 2010 the Spanish alphabet officially had 29 letters

a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

In 2010 the Real Academia Española official changed the Spanish alphabet by eliminating the following two letters in the alphabet “ch” and “ll” leaving 27 letters

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

To confuse things some countries, say there are 30 letters in the Spanish alphabet. The 27 letters but also including the “ch,” “ll,” and “rr” to be part of the Spanish alphabet bring it to 30 letters. As you can see the “rr” has never been an official letter in the alphabet, but you will not convince the people who insist it is.

Who is The Real Academia Española? The Real Academia Española oversees the official Spanish language. RAE can officially change the Spanish language at their discretion.

In this blog I will cover all 30 letters and sounds

Interesting Fact about the Spanish alphabet:

• Spanish letters are all feminine: la “a”, la “be”, la “ce”, etc.
• The letters with accents like á, é, í, ó, and ú or the rare dieresis, ü are NOT considered separate letters in the alphabet.
• “The Alphabet” in Spanish is “el alfabeto”, although some call it “el abecedario” which is a word made up of the first three letters of the alphabet.
• Words beginning with “k,” “w,” and “x” were adopted into Spanish from other languages and are therefore used rarely.
• The letter “ñ” has never been a variation of “n,” but an official letter of the alphabet.
• The letter “v” is officially uve but it is also called ve.
• “v” (ve) and “b” (be) sound so similar in the Spanish language that different cultures differentiate the letters by calling them: “b” (be) as “be grande”, “be alta”, or “be larga” and “v” (ve) as “ve chica”, “ve pequeña”, or “ve corta”.
• The “rr” has never been in the official alphabet.
• It is common in Latin American countries to see signs with spelling errors involving “b” and “v” such as Se Bende instead Se Vende.
• The letter “w” is the least used letter in Spanish.
• It is not only the “b” and “v” that has different ways of calling them the “w” at least four ways to say the letter in Spanish: “doble ve”, “doble u”, “doble uve”, or “uve doble.”
• The letter “y” is officially called ye as of 2010, but many people know it as igriega.
• The letter “e” is the most common letter in both English and Spanish.
• In Spain, “c” and “z” are pronounced more like “th” in English. an example is Barcelona = Barthelona.