Scribes made these abbreviations to save time and writing space on parchment (medieval paper), which was expensive. Here is a link to the medieval scribe found on Wikipedia showing the numerous scribal abbreviations.
Over time, the popularity for using tildes above different letters faded, except the letter Ñ survived. During the 12th century, Spanish scribes (whose job was to copy documents by hand) started using tildes above letters to indicate that the letter was doubled (scribes used ñ for nn and ã for aa). Originally, the old Spanish language used words with two consecutive letters, such as nn.
In fact, this tilde above the N makes the letter “Ñ” a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet.īut where did the letter Ñ come from and why do we use it today? The tilde is used to distinguish an “N “from an “Ñ”.
#HOW TO MAKE TILDE OVER LETTER IN WORD HOW TO#
Detailed Information on the Letter Ñ and How to Use ItĪs we discussed above, a squiggly dash or a squiggle above an “N” is called a tilde. Below, we take a deep dive into the letter Ñ’s history, pronunciation, provide examples and discuss the cultural significance. So when you use a regular N or the special Ñ, it is important to understand the difference. We don’t use it every time we have a word with the letter N in Spanish. Ñ is a letter of the alphabet formed by placing a tilde above an uppercase or lowercase N.īut there’s more to simply placing the squiggly dash above an N.
What is the squiggle over the letter N in Spanish? The squiggle over the letter Ñ in Spanish is called a tilde (also referred to as a virgulilla in Spanish). After some research on this topic, I decided to write a helpful post to explain the squiggle or squiggly dash over the letter N in Spanish. When I first started learning Spanish, I was confused why there was a squiggle or squiggly dash over the letter N.
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