Encyclopedia
Spanish or
Castilian is an Iberian Romance language. It was spoken by roughly 364 million people in the year 2000 . Current estimation accounts up to 410 million, making Spanish the most widely spoken
Romance language.
Spanish originated as a dialect in the
Cantabria region of
Spain; from that region, its use gradually spread to the kingdom of
Castile, where it became the principal language of government and trade. It was later brought to the
Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world in the last five centuries by Spanish explorers, colonists and empire-builders. Spanish is one of six official working languages of the
United Nations and one of the most used global languages, along with
English. It is spoken on all continents, most extensively in
North and
South America,
Europe, and certain parts of
Africa,
Asia and
Oceania. Within the
globalized market, there is currently an international expansion and recognition of the Spanish language in
literature, the
film industry,
television and mostly
music.
Naming
Spanish people tend to call this language when contrasting it with languages of other states , but call it when contrasting it with other languages of Spain . In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the official language of the whole State, opposed to . Article III reads as follows:
- Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. The other Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective Autonomous Communities…
In some parts of Spain, mainly where people speak Galician, Basque and Catalan, the choice of words reveals the speakers' sense of belonging and their
political views. People from bilingual areas might consider it offensive to call the language , as that is the term that was chosen by
Francisco Franco — during whose dictatorship the use of regional languages was discouraged— and because it connotes that Basque, Catalan and Galician are not languages of Spain. On the other hand, more nationalist speakers might prefer either to reflect their belief in the unity of the Spanish State or to denote the perceived detachment between their region and the rest of the State. However, most people in Spain, regardless of place of origin, use Spanish or Castilian indistinctively.
For the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, speakers of the language in many areas refer to it as , and in only a few is more common. is the name given to the Spanish language in
Argentina,
Bolivia,
Chile,
Ecuador,
Paraguay,
Peru,
Uruguay and
Venezuela.
Some philologists use
Castilian only when speaking of the language spoken in Castile during the
Middle Ages, stating that it is preferable to use
Spanish for its modern form. The subdialect of Spanish spoken in most parts of modern day Castile can also be called
Castilian. This dialect differs from those of other regions of Spain ; the Castilian dialect is almost exactly the same as standard Spanish.
Some Spanish speakers consider "" a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English.
Related languages
Spanish/Castilian has closest affinity to the other Iberian languages and dialects spoken within current borders of Spain. Most are mutually intelligible among speakers without too much difficulty.
Comparisons between Spanish and other languages
Spanish has different common features with
Catalan, an East-Iberian language which exhibits many Gallo-Romance traits. As with Portuguese, Spanish morphology and phonetics are much easier for a Catalan speaker to understand than the other way around. Catalan is more similar to Occitan than Spanish and Portuguese are to each other.
| Spanish | Latin | Portuguese | Catalan | English | Notes |
|---|
| nosotros | nos | nós | nosaltres | we | Quebec French: nous autres |
| hermano | germanum | irmão | germà | brother | |
| martes | dies Martis
| terça-feira
| dimarts | Tuesday | French: mardi |
| canción | cantionem | canção | cançó | song | French: chanson |
| más | magis or plus | mais
| més | more | French plus, Italian più, Romanian mai |
| mano izquierda | manum sinistram | mão esquerda, sinistra
| mà esquerra | left hand | Basque: esku ezkerra |
| nada | nullam rem natam
| nada
| res | nothing | French: rien |
Comparison between Spanish and other Romance languages
Spanish and
Italian share a very similar phonological system and do not differ very much in grammar, vocabulary and above all morphology. Speakers of both languages can communicate relatively well: at present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%. As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. Spanish is less mutually intelligible with
French and with
Romanian . The writing systems of the four languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.
Portuguese
Between the two main languages spoken on the
Iberian Peninsula, Spanish and
Portuguese, there is generally a mutual understanding between the standard spoken forms, though Spanish morphology and phonetics is much easier for a Portuguese speaker to understand than vice versa. The lexical similarity Spanish has with Portuguese is estimated at 89%..
Spanish is the official language in 22 countries:
Argentina,
Bolivia ,
Chile,
Colombia,
Costa Rica,
Cuba,
Dominican Republic,
Ecuador,
El Salvador,
Equatorial Guinea ,
Guatemala,
Honduras,
Mexico,
Nicaragua,
Panama,
Paraguay ,
Peru ,
Puerto Rico ,
Spain ,
Uruguay,
Venezuela, and
Western Sahara .
In
Belize, Spanish holds no official recognition. However, it is the native tongue of about 50% of the population, and is spoken as a second language by another 20%. It is arguably the most important and widely-spoken on a popular level, but English remains the sole official language. In
Haiti, it is spoken by a sizeable portion of the population, especially those who live close to the border with the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic. The Télévision Nationale d'Haïti, the country's national television network and the Agence Haïtienne de Presse also have occasional television and radio broadcasts in Spanish, however only
French and Haitian Creole are the only two officially recognized languages in that nation.
In the
United States, Spanish is spoken by three-quarters of its 41.3 million
Hispanic population. The continuous arrival of new immigrants enables it to resist the assimilation experienced by the languages of most previous immigrants. It is also being learned and spoken by a small, though slowly growing, proportion of its non-Hispanic population for its increasing use in business, commerce, and both domestic and international politics. Spanish holds co-official status in the unincorporated U.S. territory of
Puerto Rico.
See Spanish in the United States for further information.In
Brazil, Spanish has obtained an important status as a second language among young students and many skilled professionals. In recent years, with Brazil decreasing its reliance on trade with the USA and Europe and increasing trade and ties with its Spanish-speaking neighbors , much stress has been placed on bilingualism and Spanish proficiency in the country. On July 07 2005, the
National Congress of Brazil gave final approval to a bill that makes Spanish a mandatory foreign language in the country’s public and private primary schools . The close genetic relationship between the two languages, along with the fact that Spanish is the dominant and official language of almost every country that borders Brazil, adds to the popularity. Standard Spanish and Ladino may also be spoken natively by some Spanish-descended Brazilians, immigrant workers from neighbouring Spanish-speaking countries and Brazilian Sephardim respectively, who have maintained it as their home language. Additionally, in Brazil's border states that have authority over their educational systems, Spanish has been taught for years. In many other border towns and villages a mixed language commonly known as Portuñol is also spoken.
In
European countries other than Spain, it may be spoken by some of their Spanish-speaking immigrant communities, primarily in
Andorra , the
Netherlands,
Italy,
France,
Germany and the
United Kingdom where there is a strong community in
London. There has been a sharp increase in the popularity of Spanish in the United Kingdom over the last few years. It is spoken by much of the population of
Gibraltar, though
English remains the only official language. Yanito , an English-Spanish mixed language is also spoken.
Among the countries and territories in
Oceania, Spanish is the seventh most spoken language in
Australia; where there is an older
Argentine,
Chilean and
Spanish community and growing
Colombian and
Mexican communities mainly in
Sydney. It is also spoken by the approximately 3,000 inhabitants of
Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. The island nations of
Guam,
Palau,
Northern Marianas,
Marshall Islands and
Federated States of Micronesia all once had Spanish speakers, but Spanish has long since been forgotten. It now only exists as an influence on the local native languages and spoken by its foreign populations.
In
Asia, the Spanish language has long been in decline. Spanish ceased to be an official language of the
Philippines in 1987, and it is now spoken by less than 0.01% of the population, or 2,658 people , though recently there seems to have been a resurgence in interest in the language among the educated youth. The sole existing Spanish-Asiatic creole language, Chabacano, is spoken by an additional 0.4% of the Filipino population: 292,630 . Most other Philippine languages contain generous quantities of Spanish loan words. Among other Asian countries, Spanish may also be spoken by pockets of ex-immigrant communities, such as Mexican-born ethnic Chinese deported to China or third and fourth generation
ethnic Japanese Peruvians returning to their ancestral homeland of Japan.
In the
Middle East and
North Africa, small Spanish-speaking communities exist in
Israel , northern
Morocco ,
Turkey , and the Spanish enclaves of
Ceuta and
Melilla which are part of
Spain.
In
North America and the
Caribbean, Spanish is also spoken by segments of the populations in
Aruba,
Canada ,
Netherlands Antilles ,
Trinidad and Tobago, and the
U.S. Virgin Islands .
In
Antarctica, the territorial claims and permanent bases made by Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Spain also place Spanish as the official and working language of these enclaves.
Variations
There are important variations among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. In Spain the Castilian dialect pronunciation is commonly taken as the national standard .
Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: , , and in some parts of Latin America, . Generally speaking, and are informal and used with friends . is universally regarded as the formal form , and is used as a mark of respect, as when addressing one's elders or strangers. The pronoun is the plural form of in most of Spain, although in the Americas it is replaced with . It is remarkable that the use of for the informal plural "you" in southern Spain does not follow the usual rule for pronoun-verb agreement; e.g., while the formal form for "you go", , uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Cádiz the informal form is constructed as , using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronoun-verb agreement is preserved in most cases.
is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun in many countries of
Latin America, including
Argentina,
Costa Rica,
Ecuador,
El Salvador,
Guatemala,
Honduras,
Nicaragua,
Paraguay,
Uruguay, the Antioquia and Valle del Cauca states of
Colombia and the State of Zulia in
Venezuela. In Argentina, Uruguay, and increasingly in Paraguay, it is also the standard form used in the
media, but media in other countries continue to use or . may also be used regionally in other countries. Depending on country or region, usage may be considered standard or to be unrefined. Interpersonal situations in which the use of
vos is acceptable may also differ considerably between regions.
Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. The Spanish dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural, . In Spain there are two forms — and .
The , like academies formed for twenty-one other national languages, exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Due to this influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a neutral standardized form of the language is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.
Some words are different, even embarrassingly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognise specifically American usages. For example, Spanish
mantequilla,
aguacate and
albaricoque correspond to
manteca,
palta, and
damasco, respectively, in Argentina and Chile. The everyday Spanish words
coger and
concha are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America. The first meaning "to have sex" and the latter "vagina". The Puerto Rican word for "bobby pin" is an obscenity in Mexico.
Grammar
Spanish is a relatively inflected language, with a two-gender system and about fifty conjugated forms per verb, but small noun declension and limited pronominal declension.
Spanish syntax is generally Subject Verb Object, though variations are common. Spanish is right-branching, uses prepositions, and usually places adjectives after nouns.
Spanish is also pro-drop and verb-framed.
Sounds
The phonemic inventory listed below is not an accurate description of the current Standard Spanish because it includes historical phonemes that have been merged with others or dropped in the process of the language evolution, as noted further below.
Notes: When sounds appear in pairs, the left is unvoiced, the right is voiced. Also, allophones have been denoted in parentheses . An asterisk marks sounds that appear in some dialects but not others.The consonantal system of Castilian Spanish, by the 16th century, underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from some nearby Romance languages, such as
Portuguese and
Catalan:
- The initial , that had evolved into a vacillating , was lost in most words .
- The voiced labiodental fricative merged with the bilabial oclusive . Orthographically, b and v do not correspond to different phonemes in contemporary Spanish, excepting some areas in Spain, particularly the ones influenced by Catalan/Valencian.
- The voiced alveolar fricative merged with the voiceless .
- The voiced alveolar affricate merged with the voiceless , and then evolved into the interdental , now written z, ce, ci. But in Andalucia, the Canary Islands and the Americas these sounds merged with as well. Notice that the ç or c with cedilla was in its origin a Spanish letter, although is no longer used.
- The voiced postalveolar fricative merged with the voiceless , and then evolved by the 17th century into the modern velar sound , now written j, ge, gi. However, in Argentina, y and ll are pronounced in most cases.
The consonantal system of Medieval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino and in Portuguese, neither of which underwent the shift.
Lexical stress
Spanish has a phonemic stress system — the place where stress will fall cannot be predicted by other features of the word, and two words can differ by just a change in stress. For example, the word means "road" or "I walk" whereas means "you /he/she/it walked". Also, since Spanish syllables are all pronounced at a more or less constant tempo, the language is said to be
syllable-timed.
In a written word, the stressed syllable can always be identified . An amusing example of the significance of stress is a puzzle which requires the subject to punctuate:
como como como como como como so that it makes sense. The answer is
¿Cómo, cómo como? ¡Como como como! .
Writing system
The pronunciation of almost any Spanish word can be perfectly predicted from its written form.
Spanish is written using the
Latin alphabet, with the addition of
ñ . Historically
ch ,
ll [], and "rr", were until 1994 defined as single letters, with their own names and places in the alphabet . Since 1994 these letters have been abolished, and replaced with the appropriate letter pair. This effectively means that spelling is visibly unchanged, but words with "ch" are now alphabetically sorted between "ce" and "ci", instead of following "cz", and similarly for "ll" and "rr". However, "che", "elle" and "erre" are still used in coloquial spanish to mean "ch" "ll" and "rr" respectively.
The letter
u sometimes carries diaeresis after the letter
g, and stressed vowels carry acute accents in many words. These marks usually indicate deviations from what would be expected if one followed the customary rules of Spanish orthography. For example,
gue indicates that the
u is not pronounced. However,
güe means that the
u is also pronounced Accent marks usually indicate that the customary rules of accentuation are to be ignored. In a few cases, an accented letter is used to distinguish meaning: compare with . Words that could otherwise be mistaken for function words are often given accents . Interrogative pronouns receive accents when in questions or indirect questions. Demonstrative pronouns have accents when they refer to a specific, implied object and are not being used as adjectives. In addition, is written with an accent between numerals to indicate that it is not part of the numerals: e.g., should be read as rather than . Accent marks are frequently omitted on capital letters, but should not be.
Interrogative and exclamatory clauses begin with inverted
questionand
exclamation marks .
Examples of Spanish
Note, the third column uses the
International Phonetic Alphabet, the standard for linguists, to transcribe the sounds. There are several examples of travellers' vocabulary and one literary reference.
You can . Both the transcription and the recording represent standard Castilian pronunciation.
| English | Spanish | IPA transcription | IPA Transcription |
|---|
>Spanish | | >| Spanish | | | >| English | | >| Yes | | >| No | | >| Hello | | >| How are you? | | >| Good morning! | | >| Good afternoon/evening! | | >| Good night! | | | >| Goodbye | | >| Please | | >| Thank you | | 1 or | >Excuse me | | >| I'm Sorry | | >| Hurry! | | >| Because | | >| Why? | | >| Who? | | >| What? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
