-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/01/2011 11:59 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Tres Seaver writes:
FWIW, I was taught that Spanish had 30 letters in the alfabeto: the 'ñ', plus 'ch', 'll', and 'rr' were all considered distinct characters.
That was always a Castellano vs. Americano issue, IIRC. As I wrote, Mr. Gonzalez was Castellano.
- From a casual web search, it looks as though the RAE didn't legislate "letterness" away from the digraphs (as I learned them) until 1994 (about 25 years after I learned the 30-letter alfabeto).
I believe that the deprecation of the digraphs as separate letters occurred as the telephone became widely used in Spain, and the telephone company demanded an official proclamation from whatever Ministry is responsible for culture that it was OK to treat the digraphs as two letters (specifically, to collate them that way), so that they could use the programs that came with the OS.
So this stuff is not merely variant by culture, but also by economics and politics. :-/
Lovely. :) Tres. - -- =================================================================== Tres Seaver +1 540-429-0999 tseaver@palladion.com Palladion Software "Excellence by Design" http://palladion.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk5hHswACgkQ+gerLs4ltQ7m9ACeOJZRgjcm9pd0Rnry26zP0I3t 53cAoLv78VD5eIdbjvboLaysoeREIp1t =0PuR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----