Alone and alone or alone and alone? Here’s the question. Twelve years ago, the latest edition of the Ortografía de la lengua española (2010) from the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) eliminated the diacritical accent in the adverb alone (and the demonstrative pronouns), even in cases of possible ambiguity, a decision that it has since divided academics, writers, the media, and readers. In 2023, the highest linguistic authority returns to qualify the issue of solo – only.
The truth is that the RAE had been trying to erase that accentuation rule for more than half a century, using scientific criteria. This is how he explains it in his Spelling: “The word alone, both when it is an adverb and is equivalent to only (I only had a couple of coins in my pocket) and when it is an adjective (I don’t like to be alone)”, should not “carry an accent depending on the general rules of accentuation”, as it is a flat word ending in a vowel.
Despite being “only” a plain word, the previous orthographic rule added the diacritical accent to the adverb to distinguish it from the adjective in statements in which cases of ambiguity could occur. As an example, this button: Javier speaks only at night. Is Javier only available to talk at night or does he talk to himself when it’s night?
The RAE argued for the recommendation to never mark “only”, pointing out that the use of the mark, when that word is an adverb, does not meet the fundamental requirement of the use of the diacritical mark: “oppose stressed or stressed words to unstressed or unstressed words formally identical” (yes and yes; give and of; how and how, etc.). Alone is always tonic, whether as an adjective or an adverb, justified the academics.
To resolve possible ambiguities, the RAE affirmed that the communicative context itself clears up the interpretative unknown and that, in the few and far-fetched cases of confusion, one can always use “synonyms such as only or only”, change the order of the words or add to the statement some element that avoids the double meaning.
A decade later, the RAE once again clarifies the norm and has changed the wording of the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts (DPD) regarding the writing of only without diacritical accent. The word “solo” will continue without an accent, whether it is an adverb or an adjective. But now the rule expressly allows the speaker to write only, with a tilde, “when this word can be interpreted in the same statement as an adverb or as an adjective, the tilde must be used in adverbial use to avoid ambiguities”.
Just like “only” in cases that may give rise to confusion, the RAE intends to recognize the use of the accent in the demonstrative pronouns este, esta, ese, esa, aquel, aquella and their plurals.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
