On Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:38:07 -0700 Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> wrote:
FWIW, I was taught that Spanish had 30 letters in the alfabeto: the 'ñ', plus 'ch', 'll', and 'rr' were all considered distinct characters.
Kids-these-days'ly,
Not sure what's going on, but according to the article Antoine linked to those aren't letters anymore... so much for the cultural awareness portion of UNESCO.
That Wikipedia article also says: “Los dígrafos Ch y Ll tienen valores fonéticos específicos, y durante los siglos XIX y XX se ordenaron separadamente de C y L, aunque la práctica se abandonó en 1994 para homogeneizar el sistema con otras lenguas.” -> roughly: “the "Ch" and "Ll" digraphs have specific phonetic values, and during the 19th and 20th centuries they were ordered separately from C and L, but this practice was abandoned in 1994 in order to make the system consistent with other languages.” And about "rr": “El dígrafo rr (llamado erre, /'ere/, y pronunciado /r/) nunca se consideró por separado, probablemente por no aparecer nunca en posición inicial.” -> “the "rr" digraph was never considered separate, probably because it never appears at the very beginning of a word.” Regards Antoine.