{"id":584,"date":"2012-01-12T09:56:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T15:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/?p=584"},"modified":"2021-02-21T17:09:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-21T23:09:47","slug":"the-funny-spanish-letter-with-the-squiggle-on-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2012\/01\/12\/the-funny-spanish-letter-with-the-squiggle-on-top\/","title":{"rendered":"The funny Spanish letter with the squiggle on top"},"content":{"rendered":"

January is, of course, the month when New Year\u2019s greetings are exchanged: \u201cHappy New Year\u201d in English,\u00a0Feliz A\u00f1o Nuevo<\/em>\u00a0en espa\u00f1ol. The Spanish words for \u201cyear\u201d and for\u00a0the language itself\u00a0both contain\u00a0the single most readily-identifiable\u00a0visible\u00a0<\/em>marker of the\u00a0Spanish language<\/a>: the letter\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>, pronounced \u2018EN-yeh\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00d1<\/em>\u00a0is a letter, but so much more: its\u00a0cultural significance<\/a>\u00a0is great and seems only to be growing.<\/p>\n

The \u2018ny\u2019 in English \u2018canyon\u2019 is the sound this letter represents. Indeed, that word comes from the Spanish\u00a0ca\u00f1\u00f3n\u00a0<\/em>which can mean \u2018canyon\u2019 (like\u00a0El Gran Ca\u00f1\u00f3n del Colorado,<\/em>\u00a0The Grand Canyon) or \u2018cannon\u2019 (the weapon). The job the single letter\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>does to represent the \u2018ny\u2019 sound in Spanish is done by two letters in other languages: in Italian and French by\u00a0gn<\/em>, and in Portuguese by\u00a0nh,\u00a0<\/em>for instance. So\u00a0lasagna<\/em>\u00a0is spelled\u00a0lasanha\u00a0<\/em>in Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon, but\u00a0lasa\u00f1a<\/em>\u00a0in Caracas and Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n

So powerful is this letter (which many non-Spanish speakers think of as an \u2018N with a little squiggle on top\u2019) as a marker of Spanish-ness that one often hears English speakers add it to Spanish words that actually have only a simple \u2018N\u2019. For instance, the\u00a0habanero<\/em>\u00a0pepper is often pronounced in English as if it were\u00a0haba\u00f1ero<\/em>.\u00a0 This sort of thing happens a lot in language and is known as \u2018hyper-correction\u2019: the speaker makes an extra effort to be correct, and overdoes it.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same reason people sometimes say \u201cThey sent a letter to he and I.\u201d<\/p>\n

The familiarity of\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0to English speakers, especially in the United States, is reinforced by its presence in a number of words in common use:\u00a0pi\u00f1ata, jalape\u00f1o, ma\u00f1ana, ni\u00f1o, Espa\u00f1a, espa\u00f1ol,\u00a0<\/em>and others.<\/p>\n

Extract from Antonio de Nebrija\u2019s pioneering grammar of the Spanish language, published in 1492, a year of some significance in Spanish, and world, history<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But where did this peculiar letter come from?\u00a0 Historical linguists \u00a0tell us that in the Middle Ages, Spanish words originating in Latin that had a double\u00a0n<\/em>\u00a0came to be pronounced \u2018ny\u2019. The phonetic term for this is \u2018palatalization\u2019: rather than the tip of the tongue touching the front of the palate, at the edge of the teeth, the tongue is brought all the way up to the palate, or roof of the mouth, and a larger section of the tongue touches the palate.\u00a0 Thus, what had been an \u2018n\u2019 sound becomes \u2018ny\u2019. That is one part of the story\u2014the sound.<\/p>\n

And sound seems to be an important part of\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u2018s appeal. Some linguists of Spanish believe that the palatalization ofn\u00a0<\/em>is a strong phonetic tendency in infancy, which has led to a series of words beginning with\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>and having a childish (or sometimes, by extension, foolish) connotation. Some examples:\u00a0\u00f1o\u00f1o\u00a0<\/em>(silly, insipid),\u00a0\u00f1o\u00f1er\u00eda\u00a0<\/em>(foolishness),\u00f1a\u00f1a\u00a0<\/em>(nursemaid, big sister),\u00a0\u00f1ato<\/em>\u00a0(snub-nosed, or simply a child),\u00a0\u00f1iqui\u00f1aque<\/em>\u00a0(person or thing of little value).\u00a0 Other linguists have pointed to the\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0sound as a marker of the Spanish language\u2019s expansion to the Americas\u2014and the impact of the native languages of the Americas on it.\u00a0 Words like\u00a0\u00f1a\u00f1d\u00fa<\/em>\u00a0(an ostrich-like bird of South America) and\u00f1a\u00f1dubay<\/em>\u00a0(a hardwood) come from the Guaran\u00ed.\u00a0 Others testify to African influence:\u00a0\u00f1ame\u00a0<\/em>(yam) and\u00a0\u00f1\u00e1nigo<\/em>(member of the Abaku\u00e1 male secret societies of African origin), while still others come from elsewhere:\u00a0\u00f1oqui<\/em>\u00a0is simply Hispanized phonetics for Italian\u00a0gnocchi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Besides sound, the other part\u00a0of the story comes to us from paleographers, who study ancient writing:\u00a0parchment, the paper of its day, was very expensive; to save space, writers or copyists of manuscripts placed one\u00a0n\u2014<\/em>a smaller one\u2014atop the other. So, in truth, the \u2018single\u2019 letter\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0was born as the fusion of two\u00a0n<\/em>\u2018s. (The ampersand, not unique to Spanish, was similarly born as a digraph, or combination of two letters: Latin\u00a0et,\u00a0<\/em>meaning \u2018and\u2019.)<\/p>\n

Throughout the modern history of the language, then,\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0has been\u00a0a distinctive, instantly recognizable feature of Spanish writing and type: the fifteenth letter of the alphabet (for centuries it was the sixteenth, as the consonant combination\u00a0ch<\/em>, between\u00a0c\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0d<\/em>, was fourth; the reform of the year 2010 eliminated\u00a0ch<\/em>, as well as\u00a0ll<\/em>, as separate letters of the alphabet).<\/p>\n

The age of the computer and the Internet brought with it a serious challenge to the survival of\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>, and revealed perhaps unsuspected depths of feeling towards it among Spanish speakers.\u00a0 In the early 1990s, unease arose in Spain over the exporting to that country of computer keyboards without the\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>(as well as the inverted marks that are used to open exclamations or questions).\u00a0 When the Spanish Government openly expressed its distress and raised the possibility of requiring computers sold in Spain to have an\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>key,\u00a0the European Community cried \u201cFoul!\u201d and alleged\u00a0protectionism.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a wave of emotional defenses of\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0began to surge throughout the Spanish-speaking world.\u00a0 Famously, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez lashed out at the \u201carrogance\u201d and \u201cabuse\u201d in the drive to\u00a0eliminate\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0for reasons of mere \u201ccommercial convenience.\u201d The Argentine poet Mar\u00eda Elena\u00a0Walsh, beloved composer\u00a0of children\u2019s music,\u00a0also defended\u00a0 \u201cthis letter that is ours, this letter with its little hood, something that might seem insignificant, but is less\u00a0\u00f1o\u00f1o<\/em>\u00a0[silly] than it might seem . . . The\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>is people.\u201d\u00a0 Somehow\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>became a symbol\u2014the<\/em>\u00a0symbol\u2014of\u00a0 what was distinctive and unique about the Spanish language and the cultures that use it.<\/p>\n

Finally, Spain passed a law in 1993 protecting\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>by requiring computer keyboards\u00a0sold in the country to include it; invoking the Maastricht Treaty\u2019s of\u00a0cultural\u00a0differences.\u00a0 Luis Dur\u00e1n Rojo, from Peru,\u00a0tells this story<\/a>\u00a0engagingly.\u00a0 Of course, millions of Spanish speakers living outside of Spain and Latin America use laptops and other devices that lack an\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u00a0key, and are not aware of how to produce that character\u00a0(in Word,\u00a0you press Control and Shift together, then the tilde key, then the letter\u00a0n<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0The Spanish of emails, tweets, and instant messages is full of attempts to render the sound either phonetically (anio\u00a0<\/em>and the much less common\u00a0anyo<\/em>),\u00a0Portuguese style (anho),\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>or in Italian orthography (agno<\/em>) for\u00a0a\u00f1o.\u00a0<\/em>It is not uncommon to see \u2018Feliz Ano Nuevo\u2019\u2014either an honest mistake by English speakers or a slightly off-color\u00a0joke by\u00a0hispanohablantes,\u00a0<\/em>as without the\u00a0\u00f1<\/em>\u2018s tilde\u00a0it literally means \u2018Happy New Anus\u2019.<\/p>\n

If the outcry over a \u2018mere\u2019 letter of the alphabet seems a bit silly, consider the reaction in the U.S. to the\u00a0Metric Conversion Act of 1975.\u00a0 That act of Congress, mandating (in an unspecified way\u00a0and without a clear timetable) the \u201cincreasing\u201d use of the metric system in the United States, created a U.S. Metric Board\u00a0in charge of\u00a0public education towards that end.\u00a0More than one Jeremiad about the loss of our cultural identity was heard in the land; there was also ridicule (comedians joked about pushy people: \u201cGive them 2.54 cm and they\u2019ll take 1.6 km\u201d).\u00a0 The USMB was disbanded by 1982, and a quarter-century later,\u00a0use of the metric system in the U.S. is incomplete and irregular at best.<\/p>\n

So the\u00a0\u00f1\u00a0<\/em>survives, and in the process has become\u00a0much more than a mere letter.\u00a0In both the Spanish-speaking world and in the U.S. (which, in truth, is part of that world, having some 40 million inhabitants for whom Spanish is either the sole, dominant, or maternal language), this letter symbolizes a language, a culture, a population. Thus, the weekly cultural\u00a0supplement of Buenos Aires\u2019s\u00a0Clar\u00edn<\/em>, one of Latin America\u2019s largest-circulation daily newspapers, called\u00a0\u00d1<\/em>, is now in its tenth year.\u00a0 On its logo, cable network CNN en Espa\u00f1ol uses a large tilde (the \u2018squiggle\u2019) over both N\u2019s.\u00a0In 1999,\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0touted \u2018Generation \u00d1\u2019, a phrase coined by Cuban-American publisher Bill Teck to name\u00a0the magazine<\/a>\u00a0he founded, aimed at young North Americans of Latin American descent.<\/p>\n

A series of little accidents, circumstances, and oddities of language and history led here: the double \u2018N\u2019 consonant in certain Latin words inherited by Spanish, palatalization leading to the \u2018ny\u2019 sound, the placing of one of the N\u2019s atop the other\u2026 let bake for several centuries, turn up the heat of globalization and the imposition of standards, leading to the assertion of the rising cultural, demographic, and economic power of Spain, Latin America, and U.S. Hispanics\/Latinos\u2014and a once quaint and humble letter stands tall and looms large now, a sort of ambassador for an entire language and culture.<\/p>\n

Pablo J. Davis, Ph.D., C.T. is Principal and Owner of\u00a0Interfluency Translation+Culture<\/a>\u00a0(TM), which delivers Spanish and English translation solutions as well as interactive, inspiring cultural training.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January is, of course, the month when New Year\u2019s greetings are exchanged: \u201cHappy New Year\u201d in English,\u00a0Feliz A\u00f1o Nuevo\u00a0en espa\u00f1ol. The Spanish words for \u201cyear\u201d and for\u00a0the language itself\u00a0both contain\u00a0the single most readily-identifiable\u00a0visible\u00a0marker of the\u00a0Spanish language: the letter\u00a0\u00f1, pronounced \u2018EN-yeh\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00d1\u00a0is a letter, but so much more: its\u00a0cultural significance\u00a0is great and seems only to be growing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[95,96,59,30,44,10,45,98,36,99,100,47,101,39,102,103,97,51,104,105,17,19],"class_list":{"0":"post-584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-interflows-language-culture-blog","7":"tag-pablo-j-davis","8":"tag-alphabet","9":"tag-cultura","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-davis","12":"tag-english","13":"tag-espanol","14":"tag-globalization","15":"tag-hispanic","16":"tag-hispanos","17":"tag-immigration","18":"tag-ingles","19":"tag-interfluency","20":"tag-latino","21":"tag-latinos","22":"tag-letters","23":"tag-n","24":"tag-pablo","25":"tag-paleography","26":"tag-phonetics","27":"tag-spanish","28":"tag-translation","29":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nThe funny Spanish letter with the squiggle on top - Interfluency<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2012\/01\/12\/the-funny-spanish-letter-with-the-squiggle-on-top\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The funny Spanish letter with the squiggle on top - Interfluency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January is, of course, the month when New Year\u2019s greetings are exchanged: \u201cHappy New Year\u201d in English,\u00a0Feliz A\u00f1o Nuevo\u00a0en espa\u00f1ol. The Spanish words for \u201cyear\u201d and for\u00a0the language itself\u00a0both contain\u00a0the single most readily-identifiable\u00a0visible\u00a0marker of the\u00a0Spanish language: the letter\u00a0\u00f1, pronounced \u2018EN-yeh\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00d1\u00a0is a letter, but so much more: its\u00a0cultural significance\u00a0is great and seems only to be growing. […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2012\/01\/12\/the-funny-spanish-letter-with-the-squiggle-on-top\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Interfluency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-12T15:56:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-21T23:09:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Pablo J. Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Pablo J. 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The Spanish words for \u201cyear\u201d and for\u00a0the language itself\u00a0both contain\u00a0the single most readily-identifiable\u00a0visible\u00a0marker of the\u00a0Spanish language: the letter\u00a0\u00f1, pronounced \u2018EN-yeh\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00d1\u00a0is a letter, but so much more: its\u00a0cultural significance\u00a0is great and seems only to be growing. […]","og_url":"https:\/\/interfluency.com\/en\/2012\/01\/12\/the-funny-spanish-letter-with-the-squiggle-on-top\/","og_site_name":"Interfluency","article_published_time":"2012-01-12T15:56:43+00:00","article_modified_time":"2021-02-21T23:09:47+00:00","author":"Pablo J. Davis","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Pablo J. 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