Which letter should go from the alphabet? K among the most cited

K or Ñ: which letter should go from the Spanish alphabet

Which letter should go from the Spanish alphabet? Posed as a game —pick one, delete it and explain why— the challenge circulating these days has K, J, W and Ñ among its most frequent answers, along with that family of letters that only appear in loanwords from other languages. The game hides a trap: simply putting «los» in front of the chosen letter turns the philological joke into a label used to target a group of people.

K, the most politically charged candidate

It is one of the most repeated letters and the most politically charged. It is reproached that almost its entire catalogue in Spanish consists of loanwords —karate, kilo, kaiser— and that its use has drifted into areas where the language gains nothing. The example cited is okupa, a spelling associated with activism that, the argument goes, impoverishes the language. It also carries the stigma of Basque orthography: some identify it with Basque and with independence movements, a leap that says more about the person making it than about the letter. «The K makes no sense at all», one participant concludes.

Ñ, W and the whisky we couldn't order

Ñ is the other major candidate, though for aesthetic reasons: it is singled out as the ugliest letter in the alphabet. W gets the same treatment on practical grounds: it barely serves words Spanish never needed. It's only good for pirates, sums up one comment that goes unanswered until someone asks how we would order a whisky, then. The V, the C and the Y also take their share of abuse within that group of letters which, depending on each person's criteria, contribute nothing.

J and the pronunciation front

J opens another front: sound. It is claimed that it isn't used in Andalusia and that it is the hardest letter for students of Spanish. So far, so linguistic. The problem comes when the conversation veers into dismissive generalisations about accents, origins or religions, with nothing behind them but prejudice. The game itself invites this: the letter stops being a sign and becomes a group of people to point at. That is where the analysis ends and something else begins. Some even invoke the authority of the RAE (Spain's Royal Spanish Academy) and its online dictionary as the only possible final word.

What's left of the alphabet if you delete one letter

Nothing. The alphabet is not up for a vote, and the only authority that appears anywhere in the thread is the Academy. The joke, though, works as a thermometer: each choice reveals more about the person making it than about the language. Whoever deletes K is arguing about Basque orthography; whoever deletes J is arguing about who speaks properly.