![]() Ñoño is another word that is very commonly used, especially in Spain. (The blue wildebeest is a herbivore.) Ñoño (Bland, Dull, Blah, Boring, Drippy, Namby-pamby) From that moment on, I never forgot it.Įl ñu azul es hervívoro. I remember they taught us this word in school when we were learning the alphabet. This is one of the words in this list almost every Spanish-speaking person knows. Ño (Mr.)Ī shortened version of Señor, used in front of the name of elderly men in rural South America. Ña is especially used in rural South America. The form Ña is a shortened version of the word Doña, used in front of the names of elderly women. Of all the Spanish words that start with ñ, I have chosen 23 that are either commonly used or interesting for some reason. Usage information is included for each word. 23 Spanish Words That Start with Ñ You Never Knew Existed The information regarding the usage of a number of these words has been extracted from the DRAE. I have added information regarding usage when available. Some of these words are used throughout the 21 countries where Spanish is an official language, while others are only used in some specific regions. So now that you know where ñ comes from and how much we love it, let’s start learning a few Spanish words that actually start with it. It is not strange to see Spanish language schools around the world use this letter or its tilde one way or another, the most universally known example being the different logos of the Instituto Cervantes. Nowadays, the letter ñ is not only an independent letter that can be found after n in Spanish dictionaries, but also a symbol of the Spanish language. More often than not, the letter ñ in Spanish indicates that the original Latin word contained a double n, but there are other letter combinations like gn, mn and ni that would also become ñ with time: Scribes kept using the tilde when they encountered a double n, and so, with time, the letter ñ became a letter in its own right. They started adding a tilde ~ (not to be confused with the Spanish tilde or accent mark) over some letters to indicate that the letter was, in fact, doubled.Ī couple of centuries passed and this system got somehow forgotten except for one double letter: nn. Once upon a time around the 12th century, scribes were tired of writing and copying books over and over again and they decided to create a system to save them time and effort. (Download) A Brief History of the Letter Ñ This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. So, as I said before, there are plenty of Spanish words starting with ñ, and you are about to learn the most important ones. Try to say the word “nuke” or, better yet, “Nyan Cat.” That’s it, that’s the ñ we were looking for! You are actually able to produce this sound perfectly well in English. There is no need for you to stress over this. However, there are way fewer words starting with this very same sound in English, so students tend to get stressed over the fact that they have to produce that sound (much as in happens to many of you when you see a Spanish word with lots of s, c or z letters like secesión) right from the start. This sound is almost identical to the sound you produce when you say the words “canyon” or “onion” in English. Native speakers of English have plenty of words with the ñ sound in the middle of a word. Many of my students are surprised when I tell them there are indeed Spanish words that start with ñ, some of which are used every day! They all start trying to produce the ñ sound at the beginning of a word, and it is hilariously cute. ![]() I bet you also know words like niño (child), araña (spider), mañana (morning, tomorrow) and bañarse (to have a bath), but they all include this letter in the middle of the word, not at the beginning. What is one of the first questions you all learn when you start your adventure with the Spanish language? Exactly! I am sure you already know a bunch of words that contain the letter ñ, and most likely you use them quite often in your conversations or essays in Spanish. The letter ñ is not in the “top three most important and most often used letters in the Spanish language” list, though we native speakers love it. That’s a whole lot of words for a letter that did not even exist in Latin!īut let’s be real. Plus, over 350 of them actually start with this letter. yes, actually!Īfter all, the search option lists 13,589 Spanish words containing the letter ñ. If Nyan Cat were a Spanish creation, would we spell it Ñan Cat? Well. JanuÑa, Ñe, Ñi, Ño, Ñu! 23 Spanish Words That Start with Ñ You Never Knew Existed
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