The previous Thursday, social networks were in turmoil and declared so The Royal Spanish Academy has returned the tilde to the adverb “solo”! The reliable fact is that the RAE has not changed its position with regard to that title, but rather has changed the wording of the standard in order to distribute it more clearly in the Pan-Spanish dictionary of doubts. The content of the previous standard is thus retained, what changes is the way it is presented.

The Academy reiterates that it is used in the adverb “alone” and in the demonstratives “este”, “ese” and “aquel”, with their feminine and plural forms, it is achievable when the person writing in the text catches a risk of ambiguity or amphibology. On this basis, it may well be noted that if the context precludes the double interpretation of a sentence, that tilde is inactive or insignificant and even constitutes a spelling error.

In the Spanish style book It is explained that the tilde is mentioned in the adverb “only” and in the demonstrative pronouns It is not justified because these words are not in the group of the diacritical accent. In addition, according to the rules of accentuation, the words “solo”, “este”, “ese” and “aquel” should not be checked, since the first three are grave or flat and end in a vowel and the last acute is ending in another consonant than Jan and so. Of course, it is insisted that this tilde can be used in cases of unclear or imprecise contexts.

Dear readers, when a text is properly constructed, the wrong meaning or double interpretation is ruled out and the tilde in question is inactive and imprecise. (F)

SOURCES:

Spanish dictionary (electronic version), Pan-Spanish dictionary of doubts (2005), Spelling of the Spanish language (2010), The good use of Spanish (2013), Spanish dictionary (2014) and its electronic version; Spanish style book (2018), from the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Spanish Language Academies; The language corner II (2018), by Piedad Villavicencio Bellolio.