Appendix:Spanish alphabet

Letters and letter names

The Spanish language is written using the Latin alphabet, along with a few special characters: the vowels with an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú), the vowel u with diaeresis (ü), and ñ. The letters k and w appear mostly in loanwords (such as karate, kilo or walkman).

The following letter names appear in preference order for speaking in Spanish from Spain.

		letter name(s)
A	a	a
B	b	be, be alta, be grande, be larga
C	c	ce
D	d	de
E	e	e
F	f	efe
G	g	ge
H	h	hache
I	i	i, i latina
J	j	jota
K	k	ka
L	l	ele
M	m	eme
N	n	ene
Ñ	ñ	eñe
O	o	o
P	p	pe
Q	q	cu
R	r	erre ere
S	s	ese
T	t	te
U	u	u
V	v	uve, ve, ve baja, ve chica, ve corta
W	w	uve doble, doble ve, doble u, ve doble, doble uve
X	x	equis
Y	y	ye, i griega
Z	z	zeta, zeda, ceta

The vowels with accents and diaeresis are considered variants of the plain vowel letters, but ñ is considered a letter in its own right, and so it appears in dictionaries after n. Therefore, for example, in a Spanish dictionary piñata comes after pinza.

The digraphs ch (named che), ll (named elle or doble ele) have traditionally also been treated as letters of the alphabet, since 1803. However, in 1994, the tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies agreed to alphabetize ch and ll as ordinary pairs of letters in the dictionary by request of UNESCO and other international organizations, while keeping them as distinct letters for the alphabet and other purposes. In 2010 the Spanish Language Academies agreed that these two digraphs were not separate letters. Similarly, rr (named erre or ere) has sometimes been considered a separate letter but is no longer.