United States EEUU in Spanish?

Question

How come the U.S. is abbreviated EEUU in Spanish? Estados Unidos, allright, but do they have that abbreviation to tell whether it's the European Union (UE - in Spanish)or the U.S.?

I was pondering over the issue when I visited the Copa America website.

اري · Accepted Answer

Hey Bense,

Yes, it can be confusing. In Spanish, double letters in capitals indicate that the letters represents a plural. Another example:  FF.AA. (Fuerzas Armadas, Armed -military-Forces). There are exceptions, though.
http://spanish.about.com/od/writtenspanish/a/ee_uu.htm

UE is the abbreviation for Unión Europea
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni%C3%B3n_Europea

TRN · Answer

You write twice the letter if the word is plural, as EstadoS UnidoS is plural, you write EEUU, altough many write just EU.
European Union (UniÃ³n Europea) is singular, so it's UE.

♥ Ferdie ♥ · Answer

Its EEUU because if you only put it once it means it's singular Estado Unido putting it twice is to make it plural.

tenpen · Answer

This is just speculation, but my guess would be because it's LOS estadoS (2 e'S) unidoS (2 u'S)

The two parts of the name are plural, so maybe that's why.

ΛLΞX Q · Answer

Because in Spanish when using abreviations of plural terms you duplicate the letter. You do it in English as well, not as often but 'pp. ' means pages while 'p.' means page.

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United States EEUU in Spanish?

5 Answers