It slipped by many of us late last month when the Royal Spanish Academy convened in Guadalajara, Mexico to dictate its new rules for Spanish language. In an act of what almost seems pure boredom for a group that has “owned” the Spanish language dictionary since 1713, they decided to delete two crucial letter combos that make our Spanish so chido…out went the “CH” as in Chespirito, Che Guevara, and Chilaquiles. They also deleted was the visually pleasing doble L, aka LL. Prior to this ruling Ch and Ll were considered separate letters responsible for unique pronunciations in our native language (their pronunciation stays even after they lost their place in the alphabet).
If not, then how would Cafe Tacuba sign the CH friendly “Chilanga Banda“?
So, if your last name begins with a “Ch” you were bumped up a bit in the alphabetical order list since now only the “C’ counts and same goes for the double L. The first to pick a bone with this rule was…take a wild guess…Hugo Chavez. Talk about ultimate disrespect to his all mighty power. You can’t tell him-or the 450 million Spanish speakers worldwide that some old folks from Madrid know best when it come to our Español.
So if the second piece to the double outed letter combo is silent in the new alphabet, I might as well be Adriana Galardo from Cicago? Not that Chingón.
And, just to make a point to the Royal Spanish Academy, I’ve included this Cafeta classic hoping they realize exactly what they are disrupting with this nonsense.