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The Royal Spanish Academy decided that the adverb ‘only’ and the demonstratives ‘this, that and that’ can be accented according to the writer’s judgment to avoid possible ambiguities.
2/3/2023
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) decided to change the wording of the Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (DPD) in the norm that defines the writing of the adverb only without tilde. According to the RAE, the doctrine does not change the essence and the word “only” will continue to be written without an accent, whether it is used as an adverb or an adjective.
However, the rule will allow writing “only” with a tilde, in case you perceive ambiguity and if it is considered that the tilde can avoid confusion of meaning. Likewise, the exception will be recognized for the demonstrative pronouns: this, this, that, that, that, that and their plurals.
It is important to remember that 13 years ago, in December 2010, the classification of the accent “only” as a misspelling was a bit of a linguistic drama. The academy’s argument at the time was to seek the maximum simplification of the norm, justifying itself in the certainty that the cases of ambiguity were very rare and easy to decipher naturally.
This measure was discussed since its adoption, since for many speakers the “only” accent was a refinement of the language, a trait of wealth that was easy to understand and that no minimally educated speaker would want to give up.
In the case of the demonstratives ‘this, that and that’, the norm will be applied with their feminine and plural forms, whenever there is a possible confusion And if so, whoever writes it perceives it.
These words “can be labeled when they function as an adverb and if there is a risk of ambiguity”, as mentioned above.
Here are some examples of the demonstratives ‘this, that and that’:
– This pill is for dizziness and this is for headache.
The first ‘this’ is a demonstrative adjective, the second is a pronoun. It is evident that there is no possible confusion despite the lack of graphic accent.
Other examples to illustrate this spelling rule are:
– These cars are eco-friendly; those do not meet the emissions requirements of the new law.
– Those Words will have consequences, because out of context they hurt a lot. Those you will have to eat them.
It is called a tilde mark or graphic register in the accent of a word due to spelling rules of a certain language. The word or term accent is often taken as a synonym for tilde.
It’s important to put attention on In the Spanish language, there are no words without an accent (the syllable with the greatest force in the intonation of a term) but there can be words without a written or graphic accent.
What is the function of the tilde?
The objective of knowing and knowing how to correctly apply the use of the tilde is to write in an effective way, improve consistency and cohesion in writing, having an increasingly better orthographic writing and apply knowledge of the language to writing, are some of the many reasons why accents should be used correctly.
However, it is necessary to highlight the existence of, for example, the words esdrújulas without tilde, agudas without tilde and various rules that they break in particular words, but thanks to the spelling rules help to write correctly.
Do words written in capital letters have tilde?
Other reasons for a word to carry an accent
In addition to the rules that were seen previously, there are other reasons why a word must have a tilde, these are:
- To differentiate Meanings between words that are spelled the same: habit / inhabited
- To differentiate functions: “I’m going to have some tea” / “I’ll bring you the supplies”
- To give expressive force to words interrogative y exclamatory: “why are we going to the square?” / “what a nice day!”
All words with at least two syllables have one that is pronounced more intensely. Clear, that’s the accent. The syllable where the stress falls is called the tonic syllable.. The rest are called unstressed syllables.
- Acute: when the tonic syllable is the last. For example: snail – pineapple – happy
- Graves: when the tonic syllable is the penultimate. examples: pencil – mast – fishing
- Esdrújulas: when the tonic syllable is the penultimate. For example: music – compass – shell
