Well, the first bit is knowing what the different editions are:
1741 Orthographía española
- Initial alphabet of 24 letters (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZ)
- U and V considered variations of the same letter
- J called i jota, Z called zeta or zeda
- Ç rejected as a letter, to be replaced by z
- W called walima rejected as a letter, foreign words with it to be pronounced as vv as vowel-consonant (that is, uv /ub/)
- Began use of x for /ks/ (but rejected /gs/)
- Rejection of the spelling ll for /l/
- Rejection of double consonants (except for ss, and cc/mm/nn when pronounced as such)
- Absolute distinction of r /ɾ/ and rr /r/, except for word-final (always r /r/)
- Circumflex on vowel after x /ks/ or ch /k/ (reflexîona, chârácter)
- c instead of q before u except when etymology dictates otherwise.
- qu[aou] and qü[ei] is /ku̮/ (qu[ei] is /k/)
- z before e or i when etymologically sensible.
- Rejection of apostrophe for synalepha
- Description of Spanish numbers (as opposed to Roman or Arabic, seriously, these are mega awesome cool, look on pages 86-87, or pages 110-111 in the PDF)
- Initial accent rules:
- No accents on monosyllabic words
- Accents always on words stressed on the antepenultimate syllable (esdrújula)
- Words ending in A, E, O, S stress penultimate. Accent otherwise.
Exception: words ending in N follow this rule when they are third-person plural forms of verbs
Exception: Don't remove accents when pronouns added to verbs
Exception: Don't remove accents when making adverbs
- Words ending in I, U stress ultimate. Accent otherwise.
- Words ending in Y stress ultimate. No exceptions.
- Words ending in consonants stress ultimate.
Exception: Surnames -az and -ez stress penultimate.
- Preposition á and conjunctions é, ó, ú always accented.
- Comma has a space before it (not specified, but shown)
- NB: There's a cool listing of handwriting and letter formation at the end on PDF pages 383-395 worth checking out.
1754 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
- Introduction of ¿ and ¡ punctuation marks (just to disambiguate, not required)
- Added letters CH che, LL elle, and Ñ eñe to the alphabet (“oops we left them out before”, they said)
- J also called jota, U deemed u vocal, V called v consonante (U/V still considered one letter with two forms, though)
- Removed the “erudite” spellings (their words in the 1803 intro, not mine), mainly th, rh, ch /k/ and ph but not completely
- Simplification of rr to r after l, n, or s and at beginning of words.
- For the handful of ch /k/ words left, circumflex no longer needed on following vowel.
- K is now explicitly for foreign words only.
- Qua, qüe pronounce u, all others silent.
- Accent rule modifications:
- Addition of accents on monosyllabic words that may not by diphthongized (dé, sé, etc.)
- Accents also on preantepenultimate syllables
- Presumption of penultimate stress — only mark ultimate stress
Exception: Words ending in DLNRXZ stress ultimate, except foreign words and names ending in -EZ
Exception: The rules for S became a giant clusterf***
1763 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
- Simplification of accent rules
- Simplification of ss, ſs, ſſ and ß to s
- Also s is only s and doesn't alternate with ſ
- Only Hebrew/Greek names to use ch /k/
- Standardization for spelling of toponyms and surnames.
- Cultismos with hie- become -ge-
- Introduced rules for Latin f to Spanish *h conversion
- h always if -ue- comes next, or a vowel comes next, and especially between two vowels
- h if it's been reduced to a "mayor suavidad"
- hie or ye depending on whether pronunciation has a semivowel or semiconsonant (see next rule)
- i normally for semivowel, y as semiconsonant, etymology be damned (no unstressed i betwixt vowels)
- Exception: use y for rising diphthongs except for vosotros conjugations and ui combinations
- Exception: use Y when capitalized (Probably to avoid confusion with lowercase L)
- /χe/ and /χi/ written ge/gi except for certain names and when -jo or -ja get suffixes attached
- Established rules on the use of X
- Omit p before t or s if not pronunciation, but
1770 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
- The preferred spelling of /χ/ is ja, ge, gi, jo, ju, unless there's an etymologic or overwhelming popular use to the contrary (Latin s becomes x, for instance) and word finally
- in-/en- prefix on m- words no longer becomes doubled m
- -mp- changed to n to match pronunciation (redempción to redención)
- First time u and v (“de corazón”) are considered separately.
- Accent rules modified:
- No accents on monosyllables, except for when two different ones vary by their separation to other words (te vs té), or for single vowel words (but not y)
- Next-to-last syllable stressed when ending in vowel absent an accent
- Accent next-to-last syllable if it was a verb form with pronouns added
- Consonant + two vowels treated as two syllables unless accent on the second vowel (frio /fri.o/ vs. frió /frjo/)
- Accent all words 3+ syllables that end in ee, ia, ie, ua, ue, uo depending on where stress falls, no accent means they are diphthongs
- Presume that words ending in ae, ao, au, ea, eo, oa, oe, oo stress the first vowel, accent otherwise
- Words ending in y with final stress need no accents
- All consonants stress final syllable, but still write accent for -ás/-és/-ís in verbs (because you don't adjust accents for plural, so -s normally is penultimate)
- -ez patronym still counts for penultimate syllable.
- Use ... or ::: for clipped text.
1775 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
1779 Ortografía de la lengua española
- (Some of these changes may have occurred in the 1775 edition)
- Quo /ko/ and qüo /kwo/ now distinguished, but more often written with c
- More ch /k/ words rewritten as c or qu leaving just the most jarring ones (Biblical, mainly).
- fi- that changed variably to hi- or y- is now always hi-.
1792 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
1803-1806 (Diccionario de Autoridades y por conferencias)
- Addition of CH che /tʃ/ and LL elle /ʎ/ to the dictionary for sorting
- Complete simplification of ch /k/ to c or qu
- Complete removal of ph (always f)
- Conversion of k to c or qu
- Conversion of x /χ/ to j or g
- Respelling based on actual pronunciation especially for now-silent letters.
- Distinction of y as consonant, i as vowel (“with exceptions” according to the 1820 prologue, see 1815)
1815 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
- Confirms and codifies the changes made in the DdA and the conferences
- J called exclusively jota, Z only zeda
- I now called i vocal and Y is y consonante (matching U/V)
- The only time y is used as vowel is when words end in a diphthong or for the conjunction
- Words like iglesia when capitalized no longer change I to Y
- Confirms and codifies the changes made in the DdA and the conferences
- Use of accent to break diphthong established (no longer assumed ever except for two-syllable words consisting of a single consonant and two vowels, in which case you accent the second vowel if it's monosyllabic and the first is a weak vowel)
- Inverted question and exclamation marks now standard, but in series of questions, only one inverted before the first question, and a closing one for each question.
- Two styles of enclosing marks, () and []
- Splitting hyphen recognized as both - and =
1820 Ortografía de la lengua castellana
1870 Prontuario de ortografía de la lengua castellana en preguntas y respuestas
- Duplication of r to rr in the interior of compound or prefixed words.
1952 Nuevas normas de prosodia y ortografía
1969 Ortografía
1974 Ortografía
1999 Ortografía de la lengua española
- Alphabetic sorting of the letters ch and ll to be considered two separate letters rather than one
2010 Ortografía de la lengua española
- Written accents to be used exclusively for phonetics and not semantics
- ch and ll removed from the alphabet
- Single name for letters (B be, I i, V uve, W uve doble, Y ye)
2012 Ortografía básica de la lengua española
One of the biggest changes is evident from the spelling of the first to second editions — the th and ph digraphs were reduced to t and f. There were some other modifications made on accents on words (ia used to always be with hiatus similar to modern Portuguese), a bit with b/v.
