I have two frustrated careers: typographer, someone who designs letters, and writer, someone who assembles letters in pleasing ways. The latter should be no surprise to someone now churning out mediocre articles on Substack.
Both of these professions revolve around letters, those twenty-six little symbols we use to communicate anything and everything we can put into words. Most words are built with several of these letters, although English does have its cheeky “a” and “I”.
Spanish has way too many two-letter words, most of which are an absolute nightmare for learners. I remember nearly pulling my hair out the first time I read a phrase like “yo no se lo di”. Sounds like a song from the Sound of Music, I thought. How the hell can that mean anything at all?
But it also has its share of one letter words. “Y” means and, “o” means or, and “a” can mean pretty much anything because fuck you. But forget about “a” for now, because it’s a stable word that doesn’t undergo the fabulous transformation that the other two do, a transformation with which I am completely obsessed.
If you’ve heard a Spanish conversation, you’ve probably wondered why the speakers are arguing before marvelling at how effortlessly the language flows. Let’s focus on the latter. It’s a language that flows nicely because its different sounds are structured very predictably. Without getting too technical, Spanish tends to avoid combining sounds that are difficult to pronounce together.
But what to do when a word is just one letter? What happens when you have to say “o” followed by, let’s say, another word that begins with o? If you try to make two o sounds, you’ll have to pause for a second between them or you’ll just end up combining both o sounds into one. Try it out loud if you don’t believe me. This is clunky, it’s jarring, and the Spanish will not stand for it. They’ve a lot to say and they’ve to say it very quickly.
The solution? Change the word “o” completely. Make it “u”. This is what happens in Spanish. To say “or others”, you can’t have “o otros” because it just doesn’t sound right. It has to be “u otros”. The same thing happens with “y”, which becomes “e” before i sounds.
This isn’t a particularly unique feature of the Spanish language. English subs out “a” for “an” before many words. “A apple” sounds completely wrong, unless you happen to be Jeremy Clarkson. It’s a similar concept, so I shouldn’t be all that intrigued by it.
But I am. There’s something about completely changing the word that fascinates me. You can say “Instagram y Facebook”, but swap the order around and you now have to say “Facebook e Instagram”. How is that not wild!
Here comes my confession. I am so obsessed with this phenomenon that I will deliberately rearrange a sentence just to be able to use the exotic and exciting “u” or “e” instead of the basic and boring “o” and “y”. If there’s a word beginning with an i sound, you can bet that I will be dragging it to the end of the phrase just to be able to write “e” just before it.
I probably forget to do this whilst speaking, as my brain still hasn’t got used to swapping out these tiny words. But if the opportunity arises to add “u otros” to the end of a phrase, you can be sure that I bloody well will.
Some people do heroin. I do this.