New technologies have brought an endless number of written communication channels: emails, social networks, instant messaging such as WhatsApp, chat rooms, digital customer service sections of companies… It can be said that today more people write than ever, a circumstance that it is inexorably accompanied by a greater number of misspellings. Everyone writes, but not everyone has the necessary reading habit to do it correctly, so doubts abound as to whether a word has an accent, if another is with b or with v, with ll or y… When trying to write As it is spoken, another common dilemma is knowing if certain terms are written in a single word or in several. And as an example, “suddenly”. Or is it “suddenly”? Won’t it be “suddenly”?
Before someone tears their clothes, the Cervantes Institute reminds us that in Spanish there is a phenomenon of word fusion, “a historical process, based, like so many, on the tendency of the language to synthesize analytical or periphrastic constructions. We are talking about cases of pairs of words that can be written both together and separately: immediately / right away; quickly / quickly; likewise / likewise; in front / in front; cheeky / hard face, high seas / high seas… In all the indicated examples is majority and preferable the use in a single word.
However, there is no double option with “suddenly”, which must always be written in two words, with the preposition “of” separated from the term “suddenly”. It is an adverbial phrase with the meaning of “suddenly”, “without preparation”, “without reasoning or suffering”, as defined in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).
Neither “suddenly” nor “suddenly” are registered forms in the dictionary, they do not exist, so writing said adverbial locution like this is a blunder that should be avoided at all costs. “Suddenly” is always written separately.
The RAE also mentions the expression “speak suddenly” (to speak to someone suddenly) as a verbal phrase that means “to say without reflection or foundation the first thing that occurs to you”.
Likewise, as a noun and without a previous preposition, “suddenly” is defined by the highest linguistic authority as “an abrupt and unexpected impulse that leads to doing or saying things of the same type”.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
