Spanish language

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This article is about the international language known as Spanish or Castilian. For other languages spoken in Spain see Languages of Spain.

Spanish or Castilian (Spanish: español or castellano) is an Iberian Romance language, and the fourth most widely spoken language in the world. It is spoken as a first language by about 352 million people, or by 417 million including non-native speakers (according to 1999 estimates). Some assert that, after English, Spanish can now be considered the second most important language in the world (probably replacing even French), due to its increased usage in the United States, the high birth rate in most of the countries where it is official, the growing economies of the Spanish-speaking world, its enormous influence on the global music market, and simply due to the broad number of areas on the Earth's surface that the language is spoken in.

"Spanish" or "Castilian"

Spaniards tend to call this language español (Spanish) when contrasting it with languages of other states (for example: in a list with French and English), but call it castellano (Castilian, from the Castile region) when contrasting it with other languages of Spain (such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan). For the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, speakers of the language in some areas refer to it as español, and in others castellano is more common. Castellano is the name given to Spanish language in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Some philologists use Castilian only when speaking of the language spoken in Castile during the Middle Ages, stating that it’s preferable to use Spanish for its modern form. Castilian can be also a subdialect of Spanish spoken in most parts of modern day Castile. It would have a series of characteristics and a specific pronunciation different to the one of Andalusia or Aragon for example, where they would speak different subdialects.

Classification

Spanish is a member of the Romance branch of Indo-European, descended largely from Latin and having much in common with its European geographical neighbors.

History

The Spanish language developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Celtiberian, Basque and Arabic, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of breve E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo). Similar phenomena can be found in most other Romance languages as well.

During the Reconquista, this northern dialect was carried south, and indeed is still a minority language in northern Morocco.

The first Latin to Spanish dictionary (Gramática de la Lengua Castellana) was written in Salamanca, Spain in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When Isabella of Castile was presented with the book, she asked, ¿Para qué quiero una obra como ésta si ya conozco el idioma?, "What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?", to which he replied, Señora, la lengua es el instrumento del Imperio, "Ma'am, the language is the instrument of the Empire."

From the 16th century on, the language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by Spanish colonization.

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara.

For details on borrowed words and other external influences in Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.

Geographic distribution

Spanish is one of the official languages of the United Nations and the European Union. The majority of its speakers are confined to the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Spanish territories in Africa (Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla).

With approximately 106 million first-language and second-language speakers, Mexico boasts the largest population of Spanish-speakers in the world. The four next largest populations reside in Colombia (44 million), Spain (c. 44 million), Argentina (39 million) and the United States of America (c. 30 million), where it is not an official language (as the US has no national official language) but is widely spoken in immigrant communities.

Spanish is the official and most important language in 20 countries: Argentina, Bolivia (co-official Quechua and Aymará), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea (co-official French), Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official Guaraní), Peru (co-official Quechua and Aymara), Puerto Rico (co-official English), Spain (co-official Catalan/Valencian, Galician and Basque), Uruguay, Venezuela, and Western Sahara (co-official Arabic).

It is an important and widely-spoken language, but without official recognition, in Andorra, Belize and the United States.

It is spoken by much of the population of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar (which is also claimed by Spain), though English remains the only official language, and the people overwhelmingly want to remain British. Yanito, an English-Spanish mixed language is also spoken.

In the United States, Spanish is spoken by three-quarters of its 41.3 million Hispanic population (the number of U.S. residents age 5 and older who speak Spanish at home is 31 million [1]). 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 does hold co-official status in the state of New Mexico, and in the unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. See Spanish in the United States for further information.

In Brazil, where virtually the entire population speaks Portuguese, 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 neighbours (especially as a member of the Mercosur trading bloc), 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 second language in the country’s public and private primary schools [2]. 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 (Judæo-Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews) 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 (especially along the Uruguayo-Brazilian border) a mixed language commonly known as Portuñol is also spoken.

Spanish is also spoken by segments of the populations in Aruba, Canada, Israel (both standard Spanish and Ladino), northern Morocco (both standard Spanish and Ladino), Netherlands Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey (Ladino), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Western Sahara.

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 UK over the last few years.

Among the countries and territories in Oceania, Spanish is the seventh most spoken language after English in Australia, where in the 2001 Australian Census, of the persons who reported they spoke a language other than English at home, around 97,000 reported Spanish. 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, and now only exists as an influence on the local native languages.

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; 2,658 speakers (1990 Census). However, the sole existing Spanish-Asiatic creole language, Chabacano, is also spoken by an additional 0.4% of the Filipino population; 292,630 (1990 census). 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 Antarctic, the territorial claims and permanent bases made by Argentina, Chile, Peru and Spain also place Spanish as the official and working language of these enclaves.

Variations

There are important variations among the various regions of Spain and Spanish-speaking America. In Spain the North Castilian dialect pronunciation is commonly taken as the national standard (although the characteristic weak pronouns usage or laísmo of this dialect is deprecated).

Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: tú, usted, and in some parts of Latin America, vos (the use of this form is called voseo). Generally speaking, tú and vos are informal and used with friends (though in Spain "vos" is considered a highly exalted archaism that is now confined to liturgy). Usted 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 "vosotros" is the plural form of "tú" in Spain, although in the Americas it's replaced with "ustedes."

Vos is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun in various countries around Latin America, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay, although only in Argentina, Uruguay, and increasingly in Paraguay, is it also the standard form used in the media. Vos may also be present in other countries as a limited regionalism. Its use, depending on country and region, can be considered the accepted standard or reproached as sub-standard and considered as speech of the ignorant and uneducated. The interpersonal situations in which the employment 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; ustedes (formal/familiar). Meanwhile, Castilian Spanish of Spain has two; ustedes (formal) and vosotros (familiar/informal).

The RAE (Real Academia Española), in association with twenty-one other national language academies, exercises a controlling influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar guides and style guides.

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. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)

As for syntax, the unmarked sentence word order is Subject Verb Object, though variations are common. Spanish is right-branching, using prepositions, and with adjectives generally coming after nouns.

Spanish is also pro-drop (allows the elision of pronouns when unnecessary) and verb-framed.

Phonology

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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 /f/, that had evolved into a vacillating /h/, was lost in most words (although this etymological h- has been preserved in spelling).
The voiced labiodental fricative /v/ (that was written u or v) merged with the bilabial oclusive /b/ (written b). 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 and some Andalusia.
The voiced alveolar fricative /z/ (that was written s between vowels) merged with the voiceless /s/ (that was written s, or ss between vowels).
The voiced alveolar affricate /dz/ (that was written z) merged with the voiceless /ts/ (that was written ç, ce, ci), and then /ts/ evolved into the interdental /θ/, now written z, ce, ci. But in Andalucia, the Canary Islands and the Americas these sounds merged with /s/ 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 /ʒ/ (that was written j, ge, gi) merged with the voiceless /ʃ/ (that was written x, as in Quixote), and then /ʃ/ evolved by the 17th century into the modern velar sound /x/, now written j, ge, gi.
The sound [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ before velar consonants /g/ and /k/.
Syllable-final [m] is an allophone of /n/ before bilabial consonants /b/ and /p/.
[β], [δ], and [γ] are allophones of /b/, /d/, and /g/ in intervocalic positions.

The consonantal system of Medieval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino, the language spoken by the descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century.

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 camino (with penultimate stress) means "road" or "I walk" whereas caminó (with final stress) means "he/she/it walked". Also, since Spanish pronounces all syllables at a more or less constant tempo, it is said to be a syllable-timed language.

Writing system

Spanish is written using the Latin alphabet, with a few special letters: vowels with an acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú); u with diaeresis (ü); and n with tilde (ñ). Since 1990, the digraphs ch, ll, and rr were considered pairs of common letters for dictionary sorting purposes. Before then, each of this pairs was considered a letter on its own and had an order in the alphabet. (i.e.: a,b,c,ch,d and k,l,ll,m,n)

Spanish precedes exclamatory and interrogative clauses with inverted question and exclamation marks, and unequivocally marks stress through a series of orthographic rules.

Spanish orthography is such that every speaker can guess the pronunciation (adapted for accent) from the written form.

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 listen to these words being read out. Both the transcription and the recording represent standard Castilian pronunciation.

English	Spanish	IPA transcription
Spanish	español	[espaˈɲol]
Spanish (Castilian)	castellano	[kasteˈʎan̪o]
English	inglés	[iŋˈgl̪es]
yes	sí	[ˈsi]
no	no	[ˈno]
hello, hi	hola	[ˈol̪a]
Good morning!	¡Buenos días!	[ˈbwen̪os ˈd̪i.as]
Good afternoon/evening!	¡Buenas tardes!	[ˈbwen̪as ˈt̪ard̪es]
Good night!	¡Buenas noches!	[ˈbwen̪as ˈnotʃes]
goodbye	adiós	[aˈðjos]
please	por favor	[porfaˈβor]
thank you	gracias	[ˈgraθjas]
sorry	perdón	[perˈðon]
because	porque	[ˈporke]
why?	¿Por qué?	[porˈke]
who?	¿Quién?	[ˈkjen]
what?	¿Qué?	[ˈke]
when?	¿Cuándo?	[ˈkwan̪d̪o]
where?	¿Dónde?	[ˈdon̪d̪e]
how?	¿Cómo?	[ˈko mo]
how much?	¿Cuánto?	[ˈkwan̪t̪o]
I don't understand	No entiendo	[noen̪ˈt̪jendo]
Help me	Ayúdame	[aˈʎuðeme]
Where's the bathroom?	¿Dónde está el baño?	[ˈd̪on̪d̪eesˈt̪ael̪ˈβaɲo]
Do you speak English?	¿Habla usted inglés?	[ˈaβl̪awsteðiɲˈgl̪es]
cheers! (toast)	¡Salud!	[sa'luð]

English:

In some village in La Mancha, whose name I do not care to recall,

there dwelt not so long ago a gentleman of the type wont to keep

an unused lance, an old shield, a greyhound for racing, and a skinny old horse.

Spanish:

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme,

no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los

de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.

IPA transcription:

[en̪un̪l̪uˈɣarðel̪aˈmantʃad̪eˈkuʝoˈn̪ombren̪oˈkjeroakorˈðarme

n̪oaˈmutʃoˈt̪jempokeβiˈβiaun̪iˈðal̪ɣoðel̪oz

ðeˈl̪anθaen̪ast̪iˈʎeroaˈðarɣaan̪ˈt̪iɣwarro'θinˈflakoiˈɣal̪ɣokorreˈðor]

El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (opening sentence).

External links

About the Spanish language

Official page of the RAE (in Spanish)
Ethnologue report for Spanish
Spanish Language & Linguistics Website
PDF: A history of the Spanish language
Numbers of speakers by countries
Why learn Spanish? 10 reasons for learning Spanish
Spanish Language Collection of lessons and other resources
Spanish evolution from Latin
Spanish Language Characteristics Some characteristics of Spanish Language

Dictionaries

DRAE, Dictionary of the RAE (Spanish-spanish)
Spanish — English Dictionary: from Webster's Rosetta Edition.
Diccionarios.com
An English-Spanish Dictionary
Tododiccionarios.com a directory of reference works in English or Spanish, classified by subject, with several thousand links.
Spanishdict.com Another Spanish-English dictionary.
Wordreference.com Comprehensive Spanish-English-Spanish dictionary.