> > From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > RR? Are are you sure? :-) > > You forgot about "ch" though which is sorted as one letter and follows > > "c" :) Doh! Not surprising considering that I rarely use my spanish and haven't had any classes in 7.5 years. > > It may interest you to know that not all authorities (or at least not all > textbooks) agree on which letters make up the alphabet. Some lists don't > include W (sometimes referred to as doble ve) and K, which exist almost > exclusively in words of foreign origin, such as kilowatt. And some lists > count RR (erre), whose sound usually is different than that of R, as a > separate letter [although the Academy does not count it as such]. > > The Academy also has ruled that while CH and LL are considered letters, for > alphabetization purposes only they should not be treated that way. It used > to be that dictionaries would list all the words beginning with CH > separately, after the words beginning with C, so, for example, the word > achatar would be listed after acordar. But in most modern dictionaries, the > words are alphabetized as they would be in English (except that the Ñ comes > after the N). Well, that is just ducky. They can't seem to agree on stuff. My dictionary counts "RR" as a single letter and doesn't include W. It also goes against the academy in terms of sorting, so even if I could think of an example to demonstrate the accent sorting, I wouldn't be able to trust the information (hmm... maybe I could look it up and then do the opposite). > > <snip> > > You will find as you learn Spanish that vowels are often written with > accents, as in tablón, and the U is sometimes topped with a dieresis or > umlaut, as in vergüenza. However, vowels with such diacritical marks are > not considered separate letters as they can be in some other languages. > > </quote> They never mentioned the umlaut in school, but I did find vergüenza in my dictionary. Interestingly enough, it means shame and the plural of the word can mean genitals. I would have expected it to be a more imported word. > > Source: > http://spanish.about.com/library/beginning/bl-beg-intro-alphabet.htm > > The same page has a link on typing diacritical marks in Spanish, including > "ñ" (for Gabe). :-) The link isn't any good for me since it only mentions windows and mac (I don't have access to a mac, and I only use windows when I can't avoid it). I did manage to find a character selection program for KDE. > > But this still doesn't answer Axel's question about relative sort positions > of accented and unaccented vowels in Spanish, unfortunately. I think I might know somebody with the answer to the question. I'll let you guys know if I find out anything.