Spelling is a convention. Although you can take etymology, literary history, or phonetics into account, each language has a different spelling convention. Languages ??such as Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German are written with their own orthography that is quite close to their pronunciation –each one with its peculiarities–, while English or French are written very differently from how they are pronounced. They pronounce themselves. In this regard, this riddle is very illustrative: What French word is written with three vowels and pronounced with the other two? Foie.
Lately we have been entertained with diacritical accents, both in Catalan and in Spanish. Do you remember the aubergine that occurred when the Institut d’Estudis Catalans suppressed a lot of them until they were reduced to fifteen? Well, the Royal Spanish Academy also had its critical day last week.
In 2010, in the new edition of its Ortografía, the RAE decided to definitively suppress the diacritical accents that differentiated adjectives from pronouns in the case of this and that in all their gender and number variants. That is to say, if we say “that engineer works in the company” or “that one works in the company”, it is not necessary to put the tilde in the second case, that of the pronoun, because there is no possible ambiguity. The RAE calls this phenomenon of possible confusion between an adjective and an adverb amphibology, in clear homage to animals that can breathe in and out of water.
With these and those, the scribes have not protested too much and have ended up assuming the rule, which had already been formulated before the 2010 Orthography and was applied quite consistently. However, with the single adjective or adverb the same has not happened. There have been many users, and even some wayward academics, who have resisted removing the tilde when it comes to the adverb: “I will go alone” (adjective) / “I will only go if they invite me” (adverb, equivalent to only ).
Faced with such reluctance, the RAE decided to add the clarification “in the opinion of the writer”, so that it would be clear that the adverb should not be labeled if it was not absolutely necessary. On Twitter he explained it like this: “It is always the one who writes who assesses whether or not there is ambiguity.” The funny thing about the message is that he added: “If the speaker perceives that there is a risk of ambiguity and writes that tilde, he will have to justify it.” Will you have to justify it? How? I wonder: adding an explanatory parenthesis after the only tick?
The spelling rule of 2010 has not changed one iota (or tilde). The RAE has only wanted to clarify that the tilde of the adverb should not be placed, except if the writer considers that there may be confusion. We are where we were, but it is clear that when those cracks open, the user can interpret it her way and end up doing what they want. If you prefer the tilde, go ahead. It is true that its use helps reading comprehension, but it is also true that in 99.99% of cases it is unnecessary, because there is no amphibology, ambiguity or possible confusion.
