This Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) guaranteed this Friday use of tilde in “only” Where there is a risk uncertainty In the opinion of the person who wrote this, it’s a possibility that was completely decided yesterday.
The RAE plenary agreed yesterday that “labeling the adverb ‘only’ is optional in contexts where, in the author’s view, its use involves a risk of uncertainty” and the obligation to write without an accent when there is no such risk.
“For example, if someone accentuates a sentence like ‘Only Ana came to the party,’ it will be difficult for them to explain the existence of a double comment,” the RAE said in a statement on its Twitter account. HE the norm leaves open the possibility that the adverb “only” will never be used. nor “this, this and that” demonstrative pronouns“, in its feminine and plural form.
“If the speaker senses that there is a risk of ambiguity and writes that tilde, he will have to justify it,” the Academy states.
Salvador Gutiérrez Ordóñez, academic director of the Spelling and Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubt (DPD), explained to EFE that the RAE’s plenary session has approved a clearer statement of the norm for publication in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubt. , it will be added that the tilde is “in the opinion of the author” a “paragraph”, which, in his opinion, does not change the norm.
However, academic and author Arturo Perez-Reverte reassured about this agreement after the plenary session on social networks. “Sometimes old wars are won”Based on the claim that RAE member writers have been defending for years in this sense.
Pérez-Reverte expressed his satisfaction with this formula, on which all scholars agree, as it does not spoil the initial formulation, but allows for a more judicious use of the tilde in these cases, since he is the author of the text. Who decides whether to use it or not?
Likewise, academic and author Luis Mateo Díez told EFE that this agreement “solved the issue”: “naturalness solved the problem” and the tilde will be “responsible for those who want to use it”, The author emphasized.
According to general sources, the norm in its previous statement did not define in whose opinion the ambiguity could exist, and there were exams and objections where its use made a mark, since it depended on the criteria of the teacher or examiner. , will now be at the discretion of the author.
On the contrary, for the linguist Elena Álvarez Mellado, that tilde has no linguistic justification: “Spanish has many words and many expressions that are ambiguous and so we don’t put diacritics”, it’s used in Spanish following the rules of accentuation,” he said, which is quite “strict” in that sense.
“There are some exceptions and exceptions, but ‘only’ has no linguistic justification”, Álvarez Mellado pointed.
“We have a very transparent and clear highlighting system, and such exceptions add nothing, they complicate the system, and the supposed benefit of avoiding ambiguities does not justify adding an exception.”