Un manuscrito olvidado de D. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar: «El abecé español»

Abstract

Among the Gregorio Mayans's linguistic production, it figures a Castilian orthographic treatise entitled El Abecé Español. This work was never published and the manuscript —in Mayans's own handwriting— nowadays remains at the Corpus Christi ancient College Library of Valencia. The purpose of this article is to introduce the content of the mentioned treatise. Actually it is quite unknown, and the few notices about it are generally erroneous. The orthographic theory developed in El Abecé Español may be considered moderner than the one of the Real Academia Española, as well as the opinions of other authors of the XVIII century, since Mayans disregards etymological point of view, basing in the use and pronunciation his orthographic system.