Revisions of Spanish orthography / ¿Qué revisiones ha tenido la ortografía española?

Question

This is a canonical question / Esta es una pregunta canónica

Recent repeals of long-standing orthographic rules in Spanish have gotten me curious. I know of the latest revision, dated 2010. I know of the 1999 revision. I have seen references to a 1959 set of revisions. What about earlier revisions to the orthographic rules? Where would I find out about them, and the changes they made?

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Las recientes derogaciones de reglas ortográficas largamente presentes en español me han producido curiosidad.

Conozco las revisiones de 2010, las últimas. También las de 1999. Vi referencias a las de 1959. ¿Qué hay de las anteriores revisiones a las reglas ortográficas? ¿Dónde puedo encontrarlas, así como los cambios que introdujeron?

Answer 1

Well, the first bit is knowing what the different editions are:

• 1741 Orthographía española

  • Initial alphabet of 24 letters _{(ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ)}
    • U and V considered variations of the same letter
    • J called i jota, Z called zeta or zeda
    • Ç rejected as a letter, to be replaced by z
    • W called walima rejected as a letter, foreign words with it to be pronounced as vv as vowel-consonant (that is, uv /ub/)
  • Began use of x for /ks/ _{(but rejected /gs/)}
  • Rejection of the spelling ll for /l/
  • Rejection of double consonants (except for ss, and cc/mm/nn when pronounced as such)
  • Absolute distinction of r /ɾ/ and rr /r/, except for word-final (always r /r/)
  • Circumflex on vowel after x /ks/ or ch /k/ _{(reflexîona, chârácter)}
  • c instead of q before u except when etymology dictates otherwise.
  • qu[aou] and qü[ei] is /ku̮/ _{(qu[ei] is /k/)}
  • z before e or i when etymologically sensible.
  • Rejection of apostrophe for synalepha
  • Description of Spanish numbers _{(as opposed to Roman or Arabic, seriously, these are mega awesome cool, look on pages 86-87, or pages 110-111 in the PDF)}
  • Initial accent rules:
    • No accents on monosyllabic words
    • Accents always on words stressed on the antepenultimate syllable (esdrújula)
    • Words ending in A, E, O, S stress penultimate. Accent otherwise.
      ^{Exception: words ending in N follow this rule when they are third-person plural forms of verbs
      Exception: Don't remove accents when pronouns added to verbs Exception: Don't remove accents when making adverbs}
    • Words ending in I, U stress ultimate. Accent otherwise.
    • Words ending in Y stress ultimate. No exceptions.
    • Words ending in consonants stress ultimate.
      ^{Exception: Surnames -az and -ez stress penultimate.}
    • Preposition á and conjunctions é, ó, ú always accented.
    • Comma has a space before it _{(not specified, but shown)}
  • NB: There's a cool listing of handwriting and letter formation at the end on PDF pages 383-395 worth checking out.

• 1754 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

  • Introduction of ¿ and ¡ punctuation marks _{(just to disambiguate, not required)}
  • Added letters CH che, LL elle, and Ñ eñe to the alphabet _{(“oops we left them out before”, they said)}
    • J also called jota, U deemed u vocal, V called v consonante _{(U/V still considered one letter with two forms, though)}
  • Removed the “erudite” spellings _{(their words in the 1803 intro, not mine)}, mainly th, rh, ch /k/ and ph but not completely
  • Simplification of rr to r after l, n, or s and at beginning of words.
  • For the handful of ch /k/ words left, circumflex no longer needed on following vowel.
  • K is now explicitly for foreign words only.
  • Qua, qüe pronounce u, all others silent.
  • Accent rule modifications:
    • Addition of accents on monosyllabic words that may not by diphthongized _{(dé, sé, etc.)}
    • Accents also on preantepenultimate syllables
    • Presumption of penultimate stress — only mark ultimate stress
      Exception: Words ending in DLNRXZ stress ultimate, except foreign words and names ending in -EZ
      Exception: The rules for S became a giant clusterf***

• 1763 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

  • Simplification of accent rules
  • Simplification of ss, ſs, ſſ and ß to s
  • Also s is only s and doesn't alternate with ſ
  • Only Hebrew/Greek names to use ch /k/
  • Standardization for spelling of toponyms and surnames.
  • Cultismos with hie- become -ge-
  • Introduced rules for Latin f to Spanish *h conversion
    • h always if -ue- comes next, or a vowel comes next, and especially between two vowels
    • h if it's been reduced to a "mayor suavidad"
    • hie or ye depending on whether pronunciation has a semivowel or semiconsonant (see next rule)
  • i normally for semivowel, y as semiconsonant, etymology be damned _{(no unstressed i betwixt vowels)}
    • Exception: use y for rising diphthongs except for vosotros conjugations and ui combinations
    • Exception: use Y when capitalized _{(Probably to avoid confusion with lowercase L)}
  • /χe/ and /χi/ written ge/gi except for certain names and when -jo or -ja get suffixes attached
  • Established rules on the use of X
  • Omit p before t or s if not pronunciation, but

• 1770 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

  • The preferred spelling of /χ/ is ja, ge, gi, jo, ju, unless there's an etymologic or overwhelming popular use to the contrary (Latin s becomes x, for instance) and word finally
  • in-/en- prefix on m- words no longer becomes doubled m
  • -mp- changed to n to match pronunciation (redempción to redención)
  • First time u and v (“de corazón”) are considered separately.
  • Accent rules modified:
    • No accents on monosyllables, except for when two different ones vary by their separation to other words (te vs té), or for single vowel words (but not y)
    • Next-to-last syllable stressed when ending in vowel absent an accent
    • Accent next-to-last syllable if it was a verb form with pronouns added
    • Consonant + two vowels treated as two syllables unless accent on the second vowel (frio /fri.o/ vs. frió /frjo/)
    • Accent all words 3+ syllables that end in ee, ia, ie, ua, ue, uo depending on where stress falls, no accent means they are diphthongs
    • Presume that words ending in ae, ao, au, ea, eo, oa, oe, oo stress the first vowel, accent otherwise
    • Words ending in y with final stress need no accents
    • All consonants stress final syllable, but still write accent for -ás/-és/-ís in verbs (because you don't adjust accents for plural, so -s normally is penultimate)
    • -ez patronym still counts for penultimate syllable.
  • Use ... or ::: for clipped text.

• 1775 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

• 1779 Ortografía de la lengua española

  • (Some of these changes may have occurred in the 1775 edition)
  • Quo /ko/ and qüo /kwo/ now distinguished, but more often written with c
  • More ch /k/ words rewritten as c or qu leaving just the most jarring ones (Biblical, mainly).
  • fi- that changed variably to hi- or y- is now always hi-.

• 1792 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

  • No significant changes

• 1803-1806 (Diccionario de Autoridades y por conferencias)

  • Addition of CH che /tʃ/ and LL elle /ʎ/ to the dictionary for sorting
  • Complete simplification of ch /k/ to c or qu
  • Complete removal of ph (always f)
  • Conversion of k to c or qu
  • Conversion of x /χ/ to j or g
  • Respelling based on actual pronunciation especially for now-silent letters.
  • Distinction of y as consonant, i as vowel (“with exceptions” according to the 1820 prologue, see 1815)

• 1815 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

  • Confirms and codifies the changes made in the DdA and the conferences
  • J called exclusively jota, Z only zeda
  • I now called i vocal and Y is y consonante (matching U/V)
    • The only time y is used as vowel is when words end in a diphthong or for the conjunction
    • Words like iglesia when capitalized no longer change I to Y
  • Confirms and codifies the changes made in the DdA and the conferences
  • Use of accent to break diphthong established (no longer assumed ever except for two-syllable words consisting of a single consonant and two vowels, in which case you accent the second vowel if it's monosyllabic and the first is a weak vowel)
  • Inverted question and exclamation marks now standard, but in series of questions, only one inverted before the first question, and a closing one for each question.
  • Two styles of enclosing marks, () and []
  • Splitting hyphen recognized as both - and =

• 1820 Ortografía de la lengua castellana

• 1870 Prontuario de ortografía de la lengua castellana en preguntas y respuestas

  • Duplication of r to rr in the interior of compound or prefixed words.

• 1952 Nuevas normas de prosodia y ortografía

• 1969 Ortografía

• 1974 Ortografía

• 1999 Ortografía de la lengua española

  • Alphabetic sorting of the letters ch and ll to be considered two separate letters rather than one

• 2010 Ortografía de la lengua española

  • Written accents to be used exclusively for phonetics and not semantics
  • ch and ll removed from the alphabet
  • Single name for letters (B be, I i, V uve, W uve doble, Y ye)

• 2012 Ortografía básica de la lengua española

One of the biggest changes is evident from the spelling of the first to second editions — the th and ph digraphs were reduced to t and f. There were some other modifications made on accents on words (ia used to always be with hiatus similar to modern Portuguese), a bit with b/v.