The Spanish term is recommended by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Academies of the Spanish language to denote a language spoken by 480 million people, because it is the international name (Spanish, Spanish, Spanisch, Spagnolo, etc..). We can say that Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world (after English and Mandarin ) and the second mother tongue (after Mandarin).

The Castilian name is reserved, it said, employment in the following cases:

• To designate the dialect novel born and employee kingdom of Castile during the Middle Ages.
• To refer to the modern dialect spoken today in the central Spanish Castile and Leon , Castile-La Mancha and Madrid.
• In Spain and in accordance with Article 3.1 of the 1978 Constitution which states that "el castellano es la lengua espaola oficial del Estado" , the Castilian term is used to designate the common language of the state, as opposed to other co-official languages in certain areas like the autonomous Catalan - Valencia , the Basque , and Galician , regarded as languages of Spain.
• In various countries of Hispanic America the term is used more often than Spanish Castilian.

Geography

Country or Spanish is an official language.

Location United States of America:

Countries and regions where Spanish is spoken without official recognition

Spanish is the official language of Spain (co-official next autonomous regions) in Europe (45 million). In America, countries with larger Hispanic populations are Mexico (107 million), Colombia (45 million), the Argentina (40 million), Peru (28 million) and Venezuela (26 million). She is also the national language of Bolivia , of Chile , from Costa Rica , from Cuba , the Dominican Republic , of Ecuador , from Guatemala , the Honduras , from Nicaragua , from Panama , from Paraguay , of Puerto Rico , the Salvador and the Uruguay. Spanish is still spoken by the Hispanic communities of the U.S. (42.69 million ), particularly in the states of the southwest ( New Mexico , California , Texas , Arizona , Nevada , Colorado , Florida with in while over 18% of Hispanics). There are also some speakers in Brazil (compulsory language in primary schools since 2005). In Africa, Spanish is spoken in Equatorial Guinea , in the cities of Western Sahara and in parts of northern Morocco. In Asia, more than 3 million existing users in the Philippines , but now there are fewer than 100,000. Finally, a variety of Castilian as the authors called Ladino, judesmo, ispanyol or Judeo-Spanish is spoken by the community Jewish Sephardi origin of the Iberian Peninsula in Israel , Turkey , Morocco or Gibraltar.

Variations and dialects

Dialects of Spain

Among the most remarkable manner of Castilian spoken in Spain include the Andalusian (notably characterized by the presence of seseo or ceceo by area), the Murcia , the castuo and the Canaries.

Changes in Hispanic America

Among the most notable include the use of an alternative system of personal pronouns. The pronoun of the third person plural ustedes (used only in Spain to speak to a group of people that we vous) replaces Hispanic America the vosotros. vosotros ^(2nd person plural, equivalent in Spain " you "when speaking French to a group of people that one is near).

Iberian pronunciation of the consonant c (before the letters e and i) or z (before a, o and u), is an interdental fricative (similar to English th). In Latin America the phoneme is always pronounced / s / (phonetically close to the French s, s being more palatal Peninsular), an important trait in common with the Canary Islands and much of the Andalusian. This pronunciation, in Spanish called " seseo , is widespread in Hispanic America.

Common features with the dialects Andalusian and Canarian explained by the fact that the colonization of Spanish America and all trade with it have long been centralized in Seville (the Canary Islands while serving as an intermediary with Iberian Peninsula ), allowing a better flow control by the monarchy. Thus the Andalusian dialect was dominant among migrants, who often spent long months before they embark on the New World.

The many African slaves deported to the Spanish empire were also influenced some differentiation of the dialects of America and developed a particular form of Spanish in contact with the settlers, while bringing their African accent.

Large disparities may exist in the lexicon. For example some common words in Spanish Peninsular are obscene in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico.

The pronunciation of the time can differ in Spain and America. Regarding the first half of the dial (12-6) use is the same. For the second half (6-12), there are variations. For example, in Spain, "He is 9 h 40" will say "Son las diez menos veinte" while in Latin America is generally preferred "Faltan veinte (minutos) para las diez", although the Peninsular paradigm exists and is sometimes used. "There is 1 h" and "It is 13 pm" to say the same way: "Es la una (of late).

Spanglish

A result of contact with the Spanish language with English , is the appearance of a talk called "Spanglish", which is used by speakers including the United States. This variant of Spanish is studied in some universities such as Amherst Massachusetts.

Writing

Like other Romance languages , Spanish has adopted the Latin alphabet and uses of diacritics and digraphs to complete. The tilde is perhaps the most famous Spanish diacritics, it gives birth to a character seen as a full letter, . On the other hand, the acute accent is used to indicate the tonic accents and distinguish some irregular homophones : the vowels carrying it are: , , , and. Finally, u is an umlaut on rare occasions, ie in the follow-gue and gui for indicating that the u is pronounced (eg bilingual, "bilingual").

Formerly, it was thought that the digraphs ch and ll each constituted a separate letter (they had their entry in the dictionary), but today they are treated as two separate letters. N tilde is, originally, as a digraph NN, N was the second short suspension by means of a line become wavy ~. Although these are the scribes who have invented Spanish cedilla (zedilla, "Little z"), it is no longer used since the ^eighteenth century (which noted the Spelling

In general, Spanish, writing, is a close transcript of the oral, and all letters are pronounced. Learning the language is thereby facilitated to some extent, for Hispanics born as for non-natives who want to learn the language. The combinations of letters and ph rh th ch and kh from the Greek are not used, and only the consonants c, r, l and n can be doubled. Rr, r as the beginning of the word, reflects alveolar fricative consonant rolled while It reflects a central consonant liquid. The combination that makes the sound k before e and i (as in French).

Traditionally, ch and ll have been considered letters in their own right and for that reason, the dictionary, is generally classified accordingly (eg camisa, claro, charla, or liar, luna, llama) . Dictionaries, however, gradually abandoned this practice and to use an alphabetical classic (as in French). This situation has been rectified by the Royal Spanish Academy in a spelling reform issued in 2010 stipulating that ch and ll no longer be considered independent graphemes, but only as a combination of two graphemes .

Grammar

The Spanish follows the general principles of other Indo-European languages , that is, languages whose grammar is inflectional type (nouns and adjectives have a gender and a number, the verb is conjugated, etc. .).

Literature

The Nobel Prize for literature in Spanish:

• Jos Echegaray , Spain ( 1904 )
• Jacinto Benavente , Spain ( 1922 )
• Gabriela Mistral , Chile ( 1945 )
• Juan Ramon Jimenez , Spain ( 1956 )
• Miguel Angel Asturias , Guatemala ( 1967 )
• Pablo Neruda , Chile ( 1971 )
• Vicente Aleixandre , Spain ( 1977 )
• Gabriel Garca Mrquez , Colombia ( 1982 )
• Camilo Jose Cela , Spain ( 1989 )
• Octavio Paz , Mexico ( 1990 )
• Mario Vargas Llosa , Peru ( 2010 )

Distribution of Hispanics in the world

Glossary

The Spaniard looks at many points in French , because of their original Latin together. Nevertheless, it remained far more archaic, remaining closer to the Latin classic. These two languages have also experienced different influences. Indeed, the legacy of the Muslim era, the Arab brought a large number of words in Spanish (about 1000), which was also influenced by the ancestor of Basque (Castilian is in fact born in Cantabria , an area of Spain where the ancestor of Basque was spoken then). Instead, the French experienced a rather Germanic and Celtic influences.

The impact of Basque is visible to the system of five vowels, the disappearance of the initial F of many words Latin and the existence of Spanish words that come from that language. For example, izquierda (left in Spanish) comes from the Basque word Ezkerra; hijo (son) comes from the Latin filium f whose first initial was delivered so sucked (graphically transcribed by an h) before disappearing completely from the pronunciation. The Cal (Spanish dialect of Romany , the language of the Roma ) was also significantly enriched the Spanish language, especially in the slang.

Belonging to the same sub-branch as Portuguese and Galician (these are languages Ibero-Romance), Spanish allows some mutual understanding with these two written languages.

Words of Arabic origin

Common names of Arabic origin