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Nat Langs wrote:
>
> I have heard that recently there has been a change to
> the Spanish collation, where can I obtain more
> information on this ?
If you are able to read Spanish, look at
<URL:http://www.rae.es/NIVEL1/LEMAS/ch.htm>
<URL:http://www.rae.es/NIVEL1/NORMAS.HTM>
I am presently unable to direct you to the specific
decision (of the reunion of the Academias de la
Lengua Espaņola in 1992) that leads to this, however.
As they wrote, this is hardly "a change in Spanish
collation". In fact, they acknowledge the fact that
the specific Spanish order with separate entries for
"ch" and "ll" are not very practical for their language
dictionnary, and hence they chose to rather use the same
pattern as the others people, dropping the digraphs when
it comes to collating.
OTOH, every Spanish knows about the 'old' (or "traditional")
rules, so the other order is still plain valid.
It will graduately fall out of use.
> Is this based on a given standard ?
The "new" collation order, also called "modern" order,
is obviously based on a standard: the order of the
Phoenician or Semitic letters, via the standard order
of letters in Latin (with the addition of the ņ as
a separate letter between n and o).
I am not sure this is the answer you were requesting.
This is an area where it hardly can exist standards,
furthermore as Spanish is spoken in various countries.
Usage is the standard.
Anyway, la Real Academia Espaņola is the most important
"standardization" organisation in this field. So I directed
you to the above links.
Antoine
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