Spanish language
From Genealogy
- “Español” redirects here. For other uses, see Español (disambiguation).
| Spanish, Castilian Español, Castellano | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | /espa'ɲol/, /kaste'ʎano/ or /kaste'ʝano/ | |
| Spoken in: | Argentina , Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, Venezuela and significant parts of the population in Andorra, Belize, Gibraltar, and the United States.
| |
| Total speakers: | First languagea: 322[1][2]– c. 400 million[3][4][5] Totala: 400–500 million[6][7][8] aAll numbers are approximate. | |
| Ranking: | 2-4 (native)[9][10][11][12] Total: 3 | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West Iberian Spanish, Castilian | |
| Writing system: | Latin (Spanish variant)
| |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | 21 countries
| |
| Regulated by: | Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (Real Academia Española and 21 other national Spanish language academies)
| |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | es | |
| ISO 639-2: | spa | |
| ISO 639-3: | spa | |
Spanish (español file— play in browser) or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language originally from the northern area of Spain. From there, its use gradually spread inside the Kingdom of Castile, where it evolved and eventually became the principal language of the government and trade. It was later taken to Africa, the Americas and Asia Pacific in the last five centuries by Spanish explorers and colonists.
Today, it is one of the official languages of Spain, most Latin American countries, and Equatorial Guinea. In total, 21 nations use Spanish as their primary language. Spanish is also one of six official languages of the United Nations.
The language is spoken by between 322 and 400 million people natively,[13][7] making Spanish the most spoken Romance language and possibly the second most spoken language by number of native speakers.[14][15]
Mexico is the world's largest Spanish-speaking country. Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the United States[16] and by far the most popular studied foreign language in U.S. schools and universities.[17][18] Spanish is among the most popular foreign languages for study in the rest of the nations of the Anglosphere in general, where on top of the widespread use of English globally, the large number of additional countries and geographic territory that Spanish allows exploring is an attractive prospect for many people. Due to proximity, linguistic similarities, and trade reasons it is also a very popular second language in Italy, Portugal, and particularly the southern states of Brazil. It is estimated that the combined total of native and non-native Spanish speakers is approximately 500 million, likely making it the fourth most spoken language by total number of speakers.[13][7] Global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the internet, after English and Chinese.[19]
Spanish is the third most influential language in the world (after English and French).[20]
Contents |
[edit] Naming and origin
Spaniards tend to call this language español (Spanish) when contrasting it with languages of other states, such as French and English, but call it castellano (Castilian), that is, the language of the Castile region, when contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. This reasoning also holds true for the language's preferred name in some Hispanic American countries. In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellana to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, as opposed to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. the other Spanish languages). Article III reads as follows:
- El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. (…) Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas…
- Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (…) The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities…
The name castellano is however widely used for the language as a whole in Latin America. Some Spanish speakers consider castellano a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English. Often Latin Americans use it to differentiate their own variety of Spanish as opposed to the variety of Spanish spoken in Spain, or vice-versa, to refer to that variety of Spanish which is considered as standard in the region.
██ Countries where Spanish has official status.
██ Countries and regions where the Spanish language is spoken without official recognition and areas with a strong Hispanic influence.
NOTE: For detailed information about the sources taken to make the map, see its description page
[edit] Classification and related languages
Castilian Spanish has closest affinity to the other West Iberian Romance languages: Asturian (asturianu), Galician (galego), Ladino (dzhudezmo/spanyol/kasteyano), and Portuguese (português), as well as to Aragonese (aragonés) and Catalan (català).
Catalan, an East Iberian language which exhibits many Gallo-Romance traits, is more similar to the neighbouring Occitan language (occitan) than to Spanish, or indeed than Spanish and Portuguese are to each other. In the Middle Ages, it was even known as llemosí (Limousin). In later centuries it was generally regarded as a dialect of Spanish, and it wasn't until the earliest years of the 20th century that Catalan was recognised as a variant of the Occitan language.
Spanish and Portuguese share similar grammars and a majority of vocabulary as well as a common history of Arabic influence while a great part of the peninsula was under Islamic rule (both languages expanded over Islamic territories). Their lexical similarity has been estimated as 89%.[1] See Differences between Spanish and Portuguese, for further information.
[edit] Ladino
- Further information: Ladino language
Ladino, which is essentially medieval Castilian and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Spanish Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. In many ways it is not a separate language but a parallel dialect of Castilian. Ladino lacks Native American vocabulary which was influential during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Castilian. It does, however, contain other vocabulary which is not found in standard Castilian, including vocabulary from Hebrew as well as Turkish and other languages spoken wherever the Sephardim settled.
[edit] Vocabulary comparison
Spanish and Italian share a very similar phonological system and do not differ very much in grammar. At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%.[1] As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. The lexical similarity with Portuguese is even greater, 89%, but the vagaries of Portuguese pronunciation make it less easily understood by Hispanophones than Italian. Mutual intelligibility with French and Romanian is even lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71%[1]): comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is as low as an estimated 45% - the same as of English. The common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.
| Latin
| Spanish | Galician
| Portuguese | Catalan
| Italian
| French
| Romanian
| English Meaning and notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nos | nosotros | nós/nosoutros | nós¹ | nosaltres | noi² | nous³ | noi | we[-others] |
| frater germānus (lit. "true brother", i.e. not a cousin) | hermano | irmán | irmão | germà | fratello | frère | frate | brother |
| dies Martis (Classical )
tertia feria | martes | martes | terça-feira | dimarts | martedì | mardi | marți | Tuesday |
| cantiō(ne, abl.) | canción | canción | canção | cançó | canzone | chanson | cântec | song |
| magis or plus | más (archaically also plus) | máis | mais (archaically also chus) | més (archaically also pus) | più | plus | mai | more |
| manus sinistra | mano izquierda
also (mano siniestra) | man esquerda | mão esquerda (archaically also sẽestra) | mà esquerra | mano sinistra | main gauche | mâna stângă | left hand |
| nihil or nulla res nata (lit. "no thing born") | nada | nada/ren | nada (archaically also rem) | res | niente/nulla | rien/nul | nimic | nothing |
- also nós outros in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads)
- noi altri in Southern Italian dialects and languages
- nous autres in Quebec French
[edit] History
, in medieval Castilian.The Spanish language developed from Vulgar Latin, with major influences from Arabic during the Al-Andalusian period, and minor surviving influences from Basque and Celtiberian, and to some extent the Germanic languages via the Vandals. Spanish developed along the remote cross road strips among the Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain, partly as strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin, Leonese speech, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions(see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año, and Latin anellum, Spanish anillo) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.
During the Reconquista, this northern dialect from Cantabria was carried south, and indeed is still a minority language in the northern coastal regions of Morocco.
The first Latin to Spanish grammar (Gramática de la Lengua Castellana) was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When Isabel de Castilla was presented with the book, she asked, "What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?", to which he replied, "Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire."
From the 16th century onwards, the language was brought to the Americas and Spanish East Indies by Spanish colonization. Also in this epoch, Spanish became the main language of Politics and Art across the major part of Europe. In the 18th century, French took its place.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara and parts of the United States, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City, that had not been part of the Spanish Empire.
For details on borrowed words and other external influences in Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.
[edit] Typical sound changes
One defining characteristic of Spanish was the diphthongization of the Latin short vowels e and o into ie and ue, respectively, when they were stressed. Similar sound changes can be found in other Romance languages, but in Spanish they were particularly significant. Some examples:
- Lat. petra > Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Fr. pierre, Port./Gal. pedra "stone".
- Lat. moritur > Sp. muere, It. muore, Fr. meurt / muert, Rom. moare, Port./Gal. morre "die".
More peculiar to early Spanish (as in the Gascon dialect of Occitan, and possibly due to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f- into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel which did not diphthongate. Compare for instance:
- Lat. filium > It. figlio, Port. filho, Gal. fillo, Fr. fils, Occitan filh (but Gascon hilh) Sp. hijo (but Ladino fijo);
- late Lat. *fabulare > Lad. favlar, Port./Gal. falar, Sp. hablar;
- but Lat. focum > It. fuoco, Port./Gal. fogo, Sp./Lad. fuego.
Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, for example:
- Lat. clamare, acc. flammam, plenum > Lad. lyamar, flama, pleno; Sp. llamar, llama, lleno. However, in Spanish there are also the forms clamar, flama, pleno; Port. chamar, chama, cheio; Gal. chamar, chama, cheo.
- Lat. acc. octo, noctem, multum > Lad. ocho, noche, muncho; Sp. ocho, noche, mucho; Port. oito, noite, muito; Gal. oito, noite, moito.
[edit] Geographic distribution
| Spanish language |
|---|
| Image:Eñe on keyboard - blue.jpg |
| Names for the language History Pronunciation Dialects Orthography Grammar: |
Spanish is one of the official languages of the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the United Nations, the Union of South American Nations, and the European Union.
[edit] Latin America
The vast majority of Spanish speakers are located in Latin America. Of most countries with the largest numbers of Spanish speakers, only Spain is situated outside of the Americas. Mexico boasts the world's largest number of native speakers. At the national level, Spanish is the official language of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official Guaraní[21]), Peru (co-official Quechua and, in some regions, Aymara), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language (co-official language English) in the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico.[22]
[edit] The non-Spanish speaking Americas
Spanish holds no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize. However, according to the 2000 census, 52.1% of the population speaks the language "very well."[23]
[24] It is mainly spoken by Hispanic descendants who have remained in the region since the 17th century. However, English remains the sole official language.[25]
Spanish has become increasingly important in Brazil due to proximity and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbours, for example, as a member of the Mercosur trading bloc.[26] In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, that makes Spanish available as a foreign language in the country's secondary schools.[27] In many border towns and villages (especially along the Uruguayan-Brazilian border) a mixed language commonly known as Portuñol is also spoken.[28]
In Haiti, French is one of two official languages, but it is spoken by only about 10% of the population. All Haitians speak Creole, the country's other official language. The latter, is a creole based primarily on French and African languages, with some English, Taíno, Portuguese and Spanish influences. Spanish, though not official, is spoken by a growing amount of the population. It is spoken more frequently near the border with the Dominican Republic, however Spanish is increasingly being spoken in more westward areas, as Venezuelan, Cuban, and Dominican trade influence Haitian society, and Haiti becomes increasingly involved in Latin American affairs.
In the United States, 42.7 million people were of Hispanic heritage according to the 2005 census. Some 32 million people, or 12% of the whole population aged 5 years or older speak Spanish at home.[29] The Spanish language has a long history in the United States (many states in the South contain land that used to be part of Mexico or other Spanish colonies) and has recently been revitalised by heavy immigration from Spanish-speaking Latin America. Spanish, moreover, is the most widely taught foreign language in the United States.[30] Though the United States has no formally designated "official languages", Spanish is formally recognized at the state level, alongside English, in the U.S. state of New Mexico, where it is spoken by almost 30% of the population. In total, the U.S. contains the world's fifth-largest Spanish speaking population.[31]
[edit] Europe
Spanish is official in Spain, the country for which it is named and from which it originated. It is also spoken widely in Gibraltar, although English is used for official purposes.[32] Likewise, it is spoken in Andorra though Catalan is the official language.[33][34] It is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.[35] Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, Spanish is the mother tongue of 1.7% of the population, representing the first minority after the 4 official languages of the country [36].
[edit] Asia
Although Spanish was an official language in the Philippines, it was never spoken by a majority of the population. Its importance fell in the first half of the 20th century following the US occupation and administration of the islands. The introduction of the English language in the Filipino government system put an end to the use of Spanish as the official language. The language lost its status in 1987, during the Corazon Aquino administration. According to the 1990 census, there were 2,658 native speakers of Spanish.[37] The number of Spanish speakers, however, are not available in the ensuing 1995 and 2000 censuses. Additionally, according to the 2000 census, there are over 600,000 native speakers of Chavacano, a Spanish based creole spoken in Cavite and Zamboanga. Many Philippine languages have numerous Spanish loanwords. See also: Spanish language in the Philippines.
[edit] Africa
In Africa, Spanish language is official in the UN-recognised but Moroccan-occupied Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic