Extremaduran Alphabet & Letters

Extremaduran (estremeñu) is a Romance language of western Spain, spoken mainly in the north of the province of Cáceres and in neighbouring villages of southern Salamanca. It is written in Latin script, but spelling proposals differ: the OSCEC proposal lists a 25-letter alphabet, with Ñ ñ after N, and also uses Ç ç and digraphs. CLDR, the Unicode locale database, has no locale alphabet entry for it, so this page shows common letters and diacritics rather than a complete inventory. K and W turn up only in names and borrowed words.

There is no official spelling standard. Writers and associations have put forward several proposals, and the Extremaduran Wikipedia follows one of them. The proposals use different conventions: the OSCEC orthography follows western Romance spelling and includes ç.

The language's character shows in its words more than in its letters. Its own name is a good example: estremeñu, with s and a final -u, where Spanish writes extremeño with x and -o.

Extremaduran letters and accents: á é í ó ú, ñ and ü

The acute accent marks a stressed syllable that breaks the default stress rules, which work as in Spanish, and capitals keep their accents: Á É Í Ó Ú. Spellings that show how the language is spoken often need one, as in Estremaúra, the Extremaduran name of Extremadura, where the d between vowels has dropped and the accent keeps the ú as its own syllable.

Ñ is the ny sound of canyon, as in Spanish: estremeñu, España. Ü marks a pronounced u in güe, güi, qüe and qüi.

Two habits of the language explain many spellings. Masculine words tend to close their final o to -u, which is why the language is estremeñu. And the h of Spanish words that once began with a Latin f, such as hacer or humo, is still breathed in Extremaduran; dialect writers usually spell that breath with a j, the letter Spanish uses for its own throaty sound.

How to type Extremaduran accents: á, ñ, ü, ¿ and ¡

The accents are the Spanish ones, so a Spanish keyboard or any Spanish method works. Windows: hold Alt and type on the number pad á 0225, é 0233, í 0237, ó 0243, ú 0250, ñ 0241, ü 0252, Á 0193, É 0201, Í 0205, Ó 0211, Ú 0218, Ñ 0209, Ü 0220, ¿ 0191, ¡ 0161, « 0171, » 0187. On the United States-International layout type ' then a vowel for á, ~ then n for ñ, " then u for ü.

Mac: hold the letter and pick from the pop-up, or press Option + E then a vowel for an acute accent, Option + N then n for ñ, Option + U then u for ü, Option + Shift + ? for ¿ and Option + 1 for ¡. Phones: long-press a, e, i, o, u, n, ? or ! and slide to the marked form. HTML: ñ for ñ, á for á, ü for ü, ¿ for ¿ and ¡ for ¡.

Extremaduran punctuation: ¿ ¡ and « »

Punctuation proposals differ. The OSCEC orthography uses a single closing ? or !, while Spanish-style writing uses ¿ and ¡; in OSCEC style, write Viva Estremaúra!. For quotations, Spanish-style typography uses the angle quotes « » first, then “ ” and ‘ ’ for quotes inside quotes, and the long dash — opens each speaker's line in dialogue.

Where Extremaduran is spoken, and its neighbours

Extremaduran is spoken in Spain 🇪🇸, mostly in the villages of northern Cáceres and the southern edge of Salamanca. CLDR estimates around 230,000 speakers, but estimates vary widely: OSCEC reports about 10,000 people who identify as speaking a language distinct from Spanish. It has no official status, and the region pays in euros, written after the number: 20 €. The green, white and black flag of Extremadura has no emoji, so people send 💚🤍🖤 instead.

Linguists usually place Extremaduran with the Astur-Leonese languages of north-western Spain, as the southern end of the chain that includes Asturian, while centuries of contact have brought it close to Spanish. Further west, in three villages of the Sierra de Gata, people speak A Fala, a separate language related to Galician and Portuguese. See the Spanish, Asturian, Galician and Portuguese collections for their letters.

The best-known writing in Extremaduran speech is poetry. José María Gabriel y Galán published Extremeñas in 1902, poems written in the speech of the villages of northern Cáceres, and Luis Chamizo's El miajón de los castúos (1921) made castúo a popular name for the way Extremadurans speak.