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Loly Estévez

For many years now it is rejected the suggestion of the European community to eliminate the Ñ letter from the keyboards of the computers of the region, taking into account that it is used just in the Spanish language and it is not part of the official languages that form the regional organization of the old continent. This letter, known in the world as a symbol of Cervantes language it is the result of the formation and evolution of our language going out of its limits.
There was not Ñ in Latin. The notaries from the monasteries applied to the double n (nn) the technique to write just one n with a typographic tilde on top. It was also necessary to find a graphic representation to the nasal sound to which some united consonants in the romance languages evolved. In this way the Latin annus became añus, finally becoming the año (year) that we use today. According to the sources consulted for this work ñ can be found in castellan, asturian, aymara, bubi, chamorro, euskera, Filipino, Guarani, mapuche, mixteco, quechua, tagalo, tetum, Wolof, zapoteco y Gallego.
Analyzing the ñ letter we see that, even when it is not on the keyboards designed to write in English, Shakespeare’s language sometimes needs to borrow it to refer to specific terms as it is the case of the phenomenon El Niño.
It seems that the concepts expressed in our language using the ñ letter will continue to expand due to the Spanish speakers. In its report of 2015, entitled Spanish, an alive language, the Cervantes Academy of the language informed that there are around 560 million of Spanish speakers, spread in all continents.
Together with the Spanish language goes the ñ in such a way that, for instance, it will still be possible in the future to identified a Cuban by the typical expression of Ñooo!.