The Spanish Alphabet

Q. Is it true that the Spanish Royal Academy (of ?) has recently abolished certain letters from the Spanish alphabet? In particular, those letters not found in the English alphabet: "ch", "ll", "ñ", and "rr"? I don't mean to say that these "letters" will no longer be used, but rather that they are not considered separate letters.

I have found out the official answer from the Real Academia Española.

If you need it, you can get a not-so-good translation of that page from AltaVista or one of the other online translators.

Basically, what the Academy is saying is that the official alphabet is this:

a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z. (29 letters)

But since 1994, for alphabetization purposes in dictionaries, the ch and ll are to be considered as they would be in English or other Romance languages. They're still considered letters, but they aren't treated that way for alphabetizing.

Note also that rr is not considered a letter, at least as far as the Academy is concerned. That was a surprise to me.

See: http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa092099.htm