The Letter 'Ñ': How a Tilde Saved Space for Medieval Scribes

The Ñ key of an old typewriter — Have you ever stopped to wonder where the Spanish letter "ñ" originated? Elizabeth Fernandez / Getty Images

The letter "ñ" is Latin small letter (aka lowercase letter) found in Spanish words. A tilde (the squiggly line over the letter) distinguishes "ñ" from "n" and gives it different pronunciation. For instance, in Spanish, "ano" is pronounced "ah-no" and "año" is pronounced "ahn-yo." And for the record, these two words have very different meanings as well.

The alphabetical character likely has a Spanish origin since it is not found in the Latin alphabet, even though similar characters appear in other romance languages such as French, Portuguese and Italian.

Contents

A Brief History of Ñ in the Spanish Language
Differences Between N in the English and Spanish Alphabet
What Is the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary?

A Brief History of Ñ in the Spanish Language

Spanish speakers spread their language from Spain and the Iberian Peninsula as they traveled and traded (and, as was the case with multiple European civilizations, colonized).

Like other languages, the Spanish language evolved as it met various cultures and linguistic groups. During the Middle Ages, scribes discovered a widely used pronunciation of the "n" sound that didn't have a written equivalent.

Scribes used "ñ" to represent the palatal nasal sound they heard on the streets. Not only did this simple character save time in speech, but it was also useful for writers trying to save space on the page instead of writing the double "nn" every time.

Differences Between N in the English and Spanish Alphabet

The letter "n" does not make the same sound in Spanish as it does in English because English was originally a West Germanic language from the Indo-European linguistic family.

Although other languages may have a similar character, how they are perceived and spoken depends greatly on which direction the original languages traveled from.

What Is the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary?

Even within the history-rich Spanish culture, interesting divergences in pronouncing certain words can occur, since these separate regions were influenced by the course of history and immigration in the ancient world

Students at the Cervantes Institute follow the tradition of Antonio de Nebrija and other famous linguists, studying old Spanish grammar and maintaining knowledge of this ancient tongue.

The Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary is a common resource anyone can use on the internet to learn how to write or pronounce any word that may exist in the language. This dictionary also includes regional differences such as Catalan, Basque and Galician.