Is it oldfashioned to write Mejico instead of Mexico?
Estoy viviendo en el estado de California, pero soy de Mexico.
Estoy viviendo en el estado de California, pero soy de Mejico.
asked Dec 11, 2013 at 9:59
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side note: "estoy viviendo" sounds like calque from English, "vivo" is how you'd say it in Spanish– vartecDec 11, 2013 at 10:49
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Related: spanish.stackexchange.com/q/245/12– FlimzyDec 11, 2013 at 11:02
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1 Answer
Generally the spelling with x is the Old Spanish (castellano antiguo) spelling. In the Old Spanish you'd have for example Don Quixote. This changed with establishment of The Real Academia Española, which published in 1754 published new edition of "Ortografia de la lengua castellana", which pretty much defined modern spelling. One of the changes was that the /x/ sound would be spelled with j instead of x, while x would only represent /ks/ sound.
However, México, being a proper name is exception from the rule. In fact México is the only spelling appearing in the official dictionary of Real Academia Española. Spelling Méjico is still sometimes used in Spain, but it's never used elsewhere in Spanish speaking countries.
The names of places stayed with the old spelling for historical reason, this is true for Mexico, Oaxaca and Texas, however names like Xavier had to use the new spelling Javier.
They also changed names that start with big I (Iota) now Jota (J) like Iesus changed to Jesus
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"México" is not the only correct spelling according to the RAE. "Méjico" isn't in the dictionary because it doesn't contain proper names. The "México" entry is just a pointer to other lemmas which include the word in a set phrase.– angusDec 11, 2013 at 17:53
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@angus: should Méjico it would appear in DRAE in these phrases as alternative spelling.– vartecDec 12, 2013 at 9:50
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It just doesn't mean anything whether a proper name appears in the dictionary or not. It's just circumstantial. If you want to show the RAE stance on the word, it's explicitly written in the DPD: lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?id=yw4cM0fJdD6eNgXK1j– angusDec 12, 2013 at 11:41