Rótulos And Ortografía

One of the concomitants of Mexico’s large informal economy is a large number of hand-painted signs, and these provide undisputable public evidence that spelling – ortografía -  is not one of the people’s fortés.

The practical thing to do when making a sign for a shop or even a street stall would be to go to the professional signmakers – these are usually themselves small businesses that display the word rótulos somewhere out front. It’s not necessarily a guarantee that the sign will be spelled correctly, but in the event of a mistake it can be taken back and complained about.

However, people who are bad at spelling usually either don’t know they are, or don’t care, at least if the many opinion forums and comments left at the bottom of news articles on Internet are anything to go by.  It’s not limited to the street stalls and markets, or thousands of mini business establishments. People who work in large offices find the same thing, and although spellcheck may alleviate some of the symptoms, it could also contribute to perpetuating the cause.

Common spelling errors in Spanish are the use of  ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ or ‘c,’ – and vice-versa – the mixing up of the ‘v’ and the ‘b’ – which are pronounced more or less the same - double ‘l’ for ‘y’ and leaving out the silent ‘h.’

Some examples:

No Estacionarce (No Parking) instead of No Estacionarse

Embases (containers) instead of envases (one Spanish rule is that ”m’ always goes before ‘b’ and ‘n’ before ‘v’)

Fivra de vidrio (fiber glass)  instead of fibra de vidrio

Sacamos torniyos instead of tornillos (we remove screws)

There isn’t really anything funny about other people’s spelling mistakes, although some of the signs can be amusing, particularly the unusual ones. One thing bears some thinking about as you make a mental list of misspelled signs. Do we derive a secret enjoyment from other people’s spelling mistakes because they don’t know how to spell, or because we do?