
Spanish and Latin American keyboards have their own separate keys for “ Ñ” and “ ñ”. Now that we understand the use of the letter Ñ, how do we type “ Ñ” and “ ñ” on our computers, smartphones, and tablets?
HOW TO MAKE TILDE MARK ON PHONE HOW TO
How to Type the Squiggly Dash Above the Letter N The reaction from the Spanish community was strongly against the reversal of the regulation. This would have allowed Spanish keyboards and other standard products to not have the letter Ñ displayed. In the early 1990’s, a European community report recommended the reversal of a regulation that required the sale of all computer products in Spain to support the characters of the Spanish language and writing system. And as a fun nickname, the Spanish men’s national basketball team is referred to as “ÑBA”, which is similar to the USA men’s basketball league of the National Basketball Association (NBA).


Spanish-language CNN has changed its logo to place the tilde “~” above both NN’s. Organizations like Instituto Cervantes and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists have adopted the letter Ñ. Throughout the years, the letter Ñ has grown to represent a sense of pride for the Spanish language community.

Scribes made these abbreviations to save time and writing space on parchment (medieval paper), which was expensive. Here is a link to the medieval scribe found on Wikipedia showing the numerous scribal abbreviations. Over time, the popularity for using tildes above different letters faded, except the letter Ñ survived. During the 12th century, Spanish scribes (whose job was to copy documents by hand) started using tildes above letters to indicate that the letter was doubled (scribes used ñ for nn and ã for aa). Originally, the old Spanish language used words with two consecutive letters, such as nn. In fact, this tilde above the N makes the letter “Ñ” a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet.īut where did the letter Ñ come from and why do we use it today? The tilde is used to distinguish an “N “from an “Ñ”. Detailed Information on the Letter Ñ and How to Use ItĪs we discussed above, a squiggly dash or a squiggle above an “N” is called a tilde. Below, we take a deep dive into the letter Ñ’s history, pronunciation, provide examples and discuss the cultural significance.

So when you use a regular N or the special Ñ, it is important to understand the difference. We don’t use it every time we have a word with the letter N in Spanish. Ñ is a letter of the alphabet formed by placing a tilde above an uppercase or lowercase N.īut there’s more to simply placing the squiggly dash above an N. What is the squiggle over the letter N in Spanish? The squiggle over the letter Ñ in Spanish is called a tilde (also referred to as a virgulilla in Spanish). After some research on this topic, I decided to write a helpful post to explain the squiggle or squiggly dash over the letter N in Spanish. When I first started learning Spanish, I was confused why there was a squiggle or squiggly dash over the letter N.
