Talk:Spanish language

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Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

1 Incorrection | 2 Loss of vosotros/vuestro in parts of South America? | 3 IPA and SAMPA usage and inconsistencies | 4 History | 5 Major changes in the 19th century? | 6 Semivowel or not? | 7 También and compadre have /n/ (arch)phoneme | 8 Inverted question marks | 9 Spanish syntax | 10 Castilian or Spanish? The situation in Spain | 11 Separate Grammar Page | 12 one of the oldest languages in the world | 13 Sound bites | 14 Oh dear | 15 Help with article | 16 MadriD | 17 Misspellings | 18 Adjectives | 19 Second person, third person, questions | 20 Castellano and Español | 21 digraphs as letters | 22 Countries that say castellano | 23 POV addition by anon | 24 Brazil | 25 Spanish word list | 26 Languages of... | 27 Northern Morocco
1 Number of speakers | 2 All of Latin America is a Spanish region??? No! | 3 second most popular language? | 4 States listing in the Infobox | 5 USA or not USA | 6 /v/ and /b/ | 7 Cervantes | 8 Subdialect | 9 Use of "Hispanophone" | 10 Proposal to shrink language box | 11 Spanish translation
1 Why Peru and not USA? | 2 Belize | 3 Bad faith
1 French language | 2 Paraguay, etc | 3 Spanish in U.S. | 4 ¿Habla usted inglés? | 5 Loanwords Section | 6 The box again | 7 Pre-modern Spanish orthography | 8 Spanish as the native language of Spain in Europe | 9 Alphabet | 10 Castilian Spanish | 11 Influence of other languages on Castillian and other Spanish dialects?
1 The misleading colour of Brazil | 2 USA and the Spanish language | 3 Spanish, like English, is not an official language of the USA, but it is a Spanish speaking country. | 4 Where Spanish is spoken | 5 Equatorial Guinea should be dark green | 6 /?/ and /s/ | 7 As spoken in.... (don't mention the States!) | 8 Castellano vs. Español | 9 Spoken in Israel too

Please add new threads at the bottom of this page

Contents


[edit] Change the intro please

At the moment it just keeps on repeating the same thing over and over without any proper references. Spanish is the most important language in the world. This makes it an important language in the USA. As an important langauge it is learnt by many people this in turn makes it more important. Important ...

  • That's real cute. Of course, being cute is rarely productive. So stop being cute, and maybe we'll see past the cuteness. 'Cuz, yeah, that was real cute. JuJube 02:36, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

A language that is really global doesn't need people to exagerate. Take English for example. Do you see English people walking around telling everyone how important their English is? English and Spanish are both my second languages so I think that my view is not biased as much as that of people with a hispanic or English background.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.148.185 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Accuracy and references

This article has some problems. The claims in the introduction are notably problematic as they do not include any references. It seems clear that various studies have come up with different statistics, so its good to mention that, but if you're going to state any particular number, at least drop a reference. And "Some assert" are coward words.

Anyways, I'd like to propose fixing up the intro by including some references and replace the "second most important language" bit with a more general "is a very important language" Can someone can cite a reference that actually says "second most important language"? Even if someone can come up with a reference, it seems that something like ranking the importance of a language is probably inherently POV and somewhat meaningless.

Also, I think coloring New Mexico dark green is incorrect. According to Spanish in the United States, Spanish is not the most widely spoken language there.

I'll try to start some research tomorrow. If you got any good references, please list them here! Ehlkej 05:57, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Just as a quick answer to your question, it would appear that dark green is the coloration chosen for places that give the language some official status for goverment purposes. I am not completly certain but New Mexico may be be colored in this manner because it has made spanish a co-official language. As I said I am not certain, but will do some research on the matter. A.E.Newman 4 May 06

[edit] Soft or hard?

I've just reverted a change in the part of the article describing the sounds of written g. It turns out that in English, "hard g" means g as in get (/g/) while "soft g" means g as in gin (/dʒ/). In Spanish, most people don't use this terminology but would probably consider the fricative g as in gema (/x/) "hard", in the sense of "harsh". What do we do? I'd prefer eradicating the common but confusing "hard/soft" distinction and speak properly of fricative and plosive sounds. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 15:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this idea. I was just about to change 'hard' to 'soft' (without having checked the page's history, I admit) when I realized they might not mean, in english or in linguistics, what my spanish intuition told me. --Rodrigo Gallardo

The soft g is only /x/ in Spain. In the rest of the world it's an /h/.Cameron Nedland 01:38, 12 April 2006 (UTC) In Spain the soft g (or hard, again depending on POV) is more commonly [χ].

[edit] Classification and related laguages

The article seems to put French and Italian at the same level in terms of similarities with Spanish and that is a big mistake. In fact, Italian is so close to Spanish or vice versa that speakers of both languages can communicate relatively well with a little of good will, which is not the case with French. Actually, Spanish is closer to Portuguese in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but much closer to Italian in terms of pronunciation. So, I suggest a change to that.

Several statements in this section are inaccurate and should be edited out. For example, there is no statistical evidence to support the claim that "the number of bilingual speakers (of Portuguese and Spanish) in Brazil (...) has greatly risen". An educated Brazilian is probably capable of understanding Spanish (due to its similarities with Portuguese), but it is actually very rare to find Brazilians who can speak Spanish. Besides, the alleged explanation in the article for this hypothetical increase in bilingualism in Brazil is also unconvincing: although nearly every nation bordering Brazil is Spanish-speaking, most Brazilians actually live very far away from border areas and, therefore, have little or no contact with their Spanish-speaking neighbors on a regular basis. The only major exception I can think of are the southernmost Brazilian states bordering Argentina and Uruguay, where local Brazilian Portuguese dialects show a certain degree of Spanish influence in pronunciation and vocabulary. Even in that latter case though, very few speakers could be classified as "bilingual". 161.24.19.82 17:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
It appears that the section on "related languages" has been turned instead on a fairly extensive description of the lexical differences between Spanish and Portuguese. I am quite sure English-language speakers who are potential readers of this article are fully aware of the fact that Spanish and Portuguese are two separate standard languages. In other words, they don't have to be reminded or convinced of that by countless examples that are totally out of place in an article that was supposed to be about the Spanish language, not about Portuguese. Mbruno 21:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Closest languages:
Genetically, so to speak, the closest languages to Spanish are:
Now considering how close to Spanish the rest of Romance languages are could be a bit tricky. French, for instance, may be genetically closer, but Spanish speakers would have less trouble understanding Italian or Sardinian than French, particularly when spoken. So many factors should be taken into account. --Info 23:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tutorials

It's very tiring to set apart spam from borderline spam and good external links in the "tutorials" department. There are a million websites that claim to have a method to practice Spanish, and 99.9% of them are just trying to sell you a course. I suggest we round up a few good external links, ditch the rest and close off the section. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 10:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

This page is a major spam attractor! Given the lack of response to the above, I decided to be bold and trimmed the section down quite a bit, though I still think there are too many links. The links I removed include a dead one, a couple that were simply advertisements for language courses, and others which did not lead to much information (or information not already in Wikipedia). --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 18:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone checked out the link:
After registering, it seems to be just another way of sending you advert-laden "newsletters" etc. Perhaps I haven't given enough time for the "Free language course" to come through, or is this just more spam? Camillus (talk) 11:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Let them come! Spam is spam, so I resort to simply scrap it off when it gets thick. If someone protests, it can be easily restored, after all. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 11:34, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

What exactly would qualify a site to be linked to from here? I am building a site to teach people Spanish and would love to be able to get a link from here. Cheers Morryau 10:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish in northwestern Brazil ?

Section and information about the map, collected to commons:Image talk:Map-Hispanophone World.png Yug (talk) 17:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC) I noticed that the world map featured in the article has the western half of the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas colored in light green, indicating a "sizeable minority of Spanish speakers". That is factually inaccurate and should be corrected. The aforementioned colored area is actually a very sparsely populated region of Brazil inhabited mostly by native Amerindians or isolated rural communities of mixed European/Amerindian descent. Most people in those communities are native speakers of either some Amerindian language or some form of uneducated Brazilian vernacular (a semi-creolized version of standard Brazilian Portuguese). One would be hard-pressed to find even a handful of people in that area with the ability to speak and/or understand Spanish, much less a "sizeable minority" of native Spanish speakers. 00:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I never noticed before! I'll contact the creator of the Map for references. Mariano(t/c) 07:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Ceiar" x "Cear" (was Re: Portuguese/Spanish cognates)

The correct noun in modern standard Portuguese is "ceia" (the older form "cea" is found only in the medieval and early modern language). The verb "cear" appears to be used however in Portugal; in Brazil, I believe the variant "ceiar" is now more common. Incidentally, "ceiar" in the modern language is not exactly a synonym of "jantar". At least in Brazil (I'm not sure about Portugal), "ceia" (noun) usually means a late-night dinner of the type one would have e.g. on Christmas eve or New Year's eve. BTW, it should be mentioned that the Portuguese language features several less-common words that are cognates of words found in other Romance languages, but are used with a different meaning. For example, the Portuguese cognate of French "fenêtre" is actually "fresta"; "fresta" however means "slit" in Portuguese, as opposed to "window" (Port "janela"). Likewise, Portuguese "tábua" is a cognate of French "table", but it means "board" rather than English "table". 161.24.19.82 12:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I checked a few Brazilian dictionaries and, as expected, they all record the form "cear" as being the correct one. However, if you do a Google Brazil search, you will notice that "ceiar" is indeed far more common. Maybe the dictionaries are just being conservative.

About "fenestra", normal modern Galician (in spite of Spanish calque "ventá") is "fiestra" or yet "fenestra", "fiestra" coming from "fenestra" > "feestra" > "fiestra" (same pronunciation as "compreender"). Parallel to this, "fieito" or "fento" ("feto"), you can find it at Priberam dictionary, "Bieito" or "Bento", and so on. Forms in "-iei-" (in fact, "-jej-", semivowel) are majoritarian ones in Galician. Also, "cea" is ther normal word.

[edit] Wrong IPA transcription

The Outside Spain IPA transcription for El quijote has at least one mistake. "Rocín" is transcribed as /ro'θin/, which must be wrong as that is the transcription given for Inside Spain. However I don't have the knowdlege to try to correct it (do I just change /θ/ to /s/? or do some vowels change too?), so I decided I'll just tell you here. 201.133.90.50 02:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC) Rodrigo Gallardo

  • Thanks for the notice. I corrected the passages, and the above table, adding common variants found in Latin America. (I didn't add aspirated variaties or the like, thought they would be better reserved for the Spanish Phonetics section.)
    Also, for future reference (for everyone), specifically for IPA transcription, know what you're doing, or ask before you make a huge correction. It isn't necessary to put the dental diacritic UNDER EVERY CONOSONANT! I found the diacritic under almost every t, d, n, ɲ, and even under ð and θ (the dental fricatives); they're dental sounds to begin with, they don't need further dentalization with diacritics!
    Rant over.Hotchy 07:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
The transcriptions are given as phonetic rather than phonemic. This means one is transcribing the actual sounds and allophones rather than the phonemes, and it may be very relevant to make it explicit that the t and d are pronounced dental and not alveolar (which is the default meaning for those symbols), a clarification that is especially relevant for English-speaking audiences whose t and d are not dental. Uaxuctum 19:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

And speaking of the IPA transcriptions, why were the vowels recently changed to the Andalucían phonemes? IPA for Spanish vowels are the same as written, ɜ and such are not used by the rest of the Spanish speaking world. While distinguishing the general difference between Latin American and Castilian Spanish seems fine, anything further should be left to a page detailing Spanish phonetics. But if we go to more minute dialectal differences, then perhaps I should add, for instance, a section on New Mexican Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Uruguay, etc. Barring substantial reason to retain the Andulicían pronunciation, I'm changing the IPA back to Standard Spanish. Matthew Stuckwisch 07:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

  • And figures I'd still miss about half of them on my clean up *arg* Matthew Stuckwisch 19:45, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Why is ð̞e ˈlan.sa considered standard Spanish? Shouldn't it be ðe ˈlan.θa? -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.218.119.14 (talk • contribs) 10:26, 10 December 2006.

Almost nobody, except (most of) the Spaniards and people with a lisp, pronounces z as /θ/. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 14:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
When I added the comment it said Standard Spanish, not Latin American Spanish or Porteño, and since three are three Standard Spanish, I thought that should be changed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.218.119.14 (talk) 12:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Importance of Spanish

We've had the last part of the intro removed and then reinstated. I personally have no problem with the content of the text, but I think it's true that it's spurious. Words like "arguably", "considered", etc., without sources, all point to the fact that the text is opinion, a comment, or basic original research. Anyone who reads the article will conclude that Spanish is extremely important; there's no need to tell the reader that. This is an article, not an essay; it must inform, not convince. I won't remove the text again myself to avoid an edit war, unless there's a consensus to do it. What do other editors say? —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 00:33, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I completely agree with you. Opinions don't contribute to the overall passage. If they reappear, should be re-deleted.Hotchy 07:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Losbeatles

Losbeatles (talk • contribs) has inserted some text that is not coherent with the rest of the article. It sets French as the second or third most important language (without sources), and sets the birth rate in most of the countries where it is official as one of the main reaons for it being so popular, which is completly tendentious. Though he/she adds other information that is not completly erroneous. I'll try to fix its edits, but the article's opening paragraph should be revised. Mariano(t/c) 10:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paraguay on the map

Section and information about the map, collected to commons:Image talk:Map-Hispanophone World.png Yug (talk) 18:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC) According to Demographics of Paraguay, only 75% of the population speaks Spanish, as opposed to the 90% that speak Guarani; thereby meaning that Spanish is not "the main language" in the country. Because of this shouldn't Paraguay be in green instead of dark green on the map? --Krsont 20:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I doubt only 75% speaks Spanish, and Spanish is actually more official than guaraní oregarding official papers. Mariano(t/c) 09:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Every stat I've read shows that Guaraní is more common than Spanish in Paraguay...this was a recent point in question on a Language list I subscribe to. While Spanish is used primarily by the ruling force, it´s not as much the language of the people (although there is a large degree of bilingualism to be sure). Think the French control of the English court: French was "official" but the people spoke English. Mix in a little more French spoken by the people and you have a similar situation.

[edit] Classification and Related Languages: Spanish x Catalan

The article claims a Catalan speaker with no knowledge of Spanish can more or less understand it, whereas the contrary is not necessarily true. I wonder how that statement has been verified in practice. The truth is most Catalan speakers happen to be either bilingual in Catalan and Spanish or at least have had considerable exposure to Spanish on radio, TV, and, more significantly, at school. That makes any assessment of mutual intelligibility biased to say the least. In purely linguistic terms though, the fact is that the lexical overlap between Catalan and Spanish is significantly lower than the one that exists between Spanish and Portuguese. In fact, Catalan vocabulary includes several "recent Latin" words (like 'parlar', 'voler', 'fromatge', etc...) that are actually shared with Italian and French rather than Spanish/Portuguese. Catalan grammar is also quite distinct from its Spanish counterpart, albeit still closely related (to the extent that the grammar of all Romance languages is). Finally, Catalan pronunciation is also quite different from the pronunciation of Spanish (and, in a few aspects, somewhat closer I think to that of European Portuguese). Given the considerable differences between the two languages, I wouldn't expect a high degree of mutual intelligibility between a Spanish and Catalan speaker without any prior knowledge of each other's language. Mbruno 14:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

  • You make a very interesting point. Since many speakers of Catalan also speak Spanish (but not the other way around), it is impossible linguistically to determine whether A. Catalan is mutually intelligible with Spanish (but not the other way around), or rather that B. speakers of Catalan readily understand Spanish because they grow up in a majority Spanish speaking environment (more likely). If it's ambiguous it should be edited or removed IMO.Hotchy 07:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I believe that, being Catalan at least as simillar to Spanish as Italan and Spanish, and since Italians that don't speak Spanish can understand quite some of it, Catalan-only speakers wouldn't understand Spanish more that what would Spanish speakers understand Catalan. To Spanish speakers, knowledge of Italian or French, can grately improve the understanding of Catalan.
I understand the idea that given the open pronunciation of vowels, a Catalan-only speaker that learns the strightfoward Spanish reading would perhaps better understand Spanish than hsi Spanish speaker counterpart, but I'm not sure if it's in the scope of this article to cover that non-practical subject. Mariano(t/c) 10:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree it's out of the scope of the article; the topic came up recently re Gallego and Spanish in the Portuguese article. This should be reserved for the Romance Languages article. Matthew Stuckwisch 02:57, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, the statement of "a speaker of Catalan who doesn't speak Spanish" in fact can be proved. There are Catalan speakers in Roussillon, France, who doesn't speak Spanish. Yes, they speak also French, but exist the case of Catalan speakers not Spanish speakers. And, in general, they understand better Spanish than a Spanish speaker understands them.

i AM ITALIAN, WHEN I WAS IN SPAIN WAS MORE SIMPLE FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND CATALAN, THAN FOR A SPANISH. THE PHONETICS OF ITALIAN AND CATALAN IS TH SAME, AND CATALAN HAVE A LOT OF ITALIAN VERBS. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.11.3.66 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Comparison between Spanish and Portuguese

Hola. I've started a new page called Differences between Spanish and Portuguese. I thought it was better to have a specific article for it, since the comparisons were taking up too much of the Portuguese language article. Feel free to add to the new article. Saludos. FilipeS 19:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish web ressource?

Hi,

Is is ok to add http://www.TODO-CLARO.COM as a new web ressource here? TODO-CLARO.COM offers free interactive Spanish exercises for beginners, intermediate and advanced students. Users can chose from different exercise types (grammar, situations, vocabulary, cultural studies). Feedback welcome.

Sadly the course is in German, so I would say no. Mariano(t/c) 06:54, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

TODO-CLARO is in German and English. The English version starts here http://www.todo-claro.com/e_index.php.

It's not enough to point to the main URL. http://www.todo-claro.com/English_cultural_studies_overview.php is the URL to use if wanted. Anyway, it only has a Quiz of cultural things, so still not good enough (my oppinion only). Mariano(t/c) 11:33, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The general criterion we've been using in Spanish-related pages is pointing to major websites and avoiding conjugation quizzes, courses, tutorials, etc., of which there are literally thousands, and which can be easily found using a common search engine, should the reader need them. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:51, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Related languages section

This section could use a rework. I reformatted the table and renamed the comparing Spanish and Catalan section to comparing Spanish and other languages since the table includes Latin and English, et al. The text by the table also goes into comparing Catalan with Portuguese. I think the table needs to move and maybe the romance languages and other languages section combined, but I want to hear what others think. Ryanminier 16:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Countries that say castellano

Argentina seems to be missing from the current list of countries that say castellano: "Castellano is the name given to the Spanish language in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela". I am from Buenos Aires and castellano is definitely the term we use. AleF

[edit] External links section de-bloated (again)

I've removed a large part of the external links of this article, in keeping with a sensible interpretation of WP:EL and WP:NOT. We do not need every conceivable online dictionary, quizz, tutorial, etc. about Spanish. Wikipedia readers can find those easily with a search engine. I've kept important reference materials, including one tutorial site because it allows for a grammar to be downloaded, rather than browsed. Some of the websites I removed were more advertising than content; others had mistakes; one was very interesting, but consisted solely of unverified original research; most repeated basic information already present in this article or its sub-articles. I suggest that new external links should be considered very carefully before being added. For some reason this page seems to be a major spam attractor... —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 22:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

My apologies! I added a link back in September or so, and noted that it survived a few of the 'despamming' raids. The link I added was for: http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen= As a beginner in Spanish, I find this site to be very helpful. The structure of the different tenses and etc. In my opinion, wordreference is far superior to the yahoo link because of this, and I believe it deserves a space in the external links section! But, it's our call, and not mine! :) By the way, here is an example of the conjugation that I talked about: http://www.wordreference.com/conj/ESverbs.asp?v=comer 84.209.8.237 02:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changed opening paragraph

I cleaned this up. It first read this way:

"Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is an Iberian Romance language. It is spoken by 332 million[1] people in countries where it is an official language, 94.6% of the whole population, 1998 data, currently these countries amount a total estimated population of 398 million, and by more than 32 million where it is an unofficial language (28 million in the US[2], 2000 data). Speakers can be nowadays estimated in 410 million in number, making Spanish the most widely spoken Romance language..."

I changed it to now read this way:

"Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is an Iberian Romance language. It is spoken by roughly 364 million people[1][2], making Spanish the most widely spoken Romance language"

The figures in the Wikipedia article for the total number of speakers of Spanish worldwide are greatly exaggerated. A significant percentage of the population in countries where Spanish is an official language actually do not speak Spanish as first language. That is the case in Spain itself and in most Latin-American countries with large indigenous populations. As for the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S, the census only indicates the percentage of the population that uses Spanish most often at home, which does not necessarily mean having Spanish as first language. From personal experience, I know several children of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U.S. who speak Spanish at home to their parents, but who are nonetheless far more proficient in English (the language they use on a regular basis at work or at school, or when interacting socially with their friends). Even if we assumed your rationale to be correct, 332 + 28 million equals 360 million, not 410 (I don't know where that number came from) !

[edit] Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is listed as one of the 22 countries that have Spanish as an official language. However, it should be noted that Puerto Rico is not a country, but a commonwealth of the United States, and that its residents are citizens of the United States, not of Puerto Rico. --Tim4christ17 07:27, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] One problem about the start of El Quijote

In the part Examples of English with Spanish Transcription and Pronunciation, there is a problem with the transcription:

English: In a village of La Mancha,

the name of which I have no desire to recall...

It's true that in the modern spanish we understand I don't want to remember something, but in the spanish of Cervantes, the meaning is I can't remember something. It does more sense than the other transcription, I think.

Are you sure about that? I have a dictionary that goes back to the early 1700s, which is, granted, still 200 years later, but the definition given in said period for querer was:

QUERER. v.a. Deſear ò apetecer con ánſia alguna coſa. Tiene la anomalía de recibir una i deſpues de la u en algunos tiempos y perſonas: como Yo quiero, Quiere tu, Aquel quiera, &c. y en los pretéritos toma la is en lugar de er: como Quiſe , quiſera, &c. y en el imperfecto de ſubjuntivo duplica la r diciendo Querria. Sale del Latino Quærere, que vale buſcar. Lat. Velle. Appetere. SOLD. PIND. lib.2.§.II. Querían antes de ſoltar el páxaro, tener aſido otro de mejor pluma. VILLEG. Erotic. Od.20.
Qué me ſirve el dinéro,
Si no me ha de alcanzar lo que yo quiero?
QUERER. Significa tambien amar con deſeo, tener cariño, voluntad ò inclinación à alguna perſona. Lat. Diligere. Amore proſequi. LOP. Arcad. f.118.Amé. quiſe y adoré una hermoſa Paſtóra. MORET. Com. Antioco y Seleuco. Jord.I. Tom V.

Since this obviously doesn't date back to the first Diccionario I'll admit I could very well be wrong, but from the definition here, it sounds like philologists back in the day saw querer as only a means of desire, or perhaps search/longing (since it claims it came from the Latin word for to search). I think "I can not search for" versus "I can not find" are two slightly different things. If anyone else has studied much golden age Spanish and can voice in (or can site an early Diccionario, which I'd be quite interested in seeing) we can try to clarify the translation. Matthew Stuckwisch 02:47, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consonant table

I just edited the consonant table, which differed from the one in the phonology page, most notably with the addition of retroflex sounds. I tried to find a discussion of the inclusion of these but couldn't find anything. There was also no indicator of what conditions these allophones occur in. Does anyone know what the deal is? AEuSoes1 09:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change of inaccurate example

I took the example of Aragon off from the sentence which says that 'the Castilian dialect differs from those of other regions of Spain (Andalusia and Aragon for example)'. While this is true that Castilian (Northern Spanish) differs significantly in many aspects -particularly in phonology- from Southern Spanish (mainly Murcia, most of Extremadura, Andalusia and the Canary Islands), the same is not true for the northern regions, where either a different language is spoken (Galician, Asturian, Basque, Aragonese and Catalan) or Spanish is spoken in a clearly Castilian way. The main differences are in intonation and the use of some words, but that happens even within different parts of Castile itself. There are no remarkable differences between the way Castilian is spoken in Soria (E of Castile) and central Aragon, for instance. Aragonese is a different language, but nowadays it is only spoken actively in the north of Aragon, so we are not talking of bilingual interference here. The Spanish spoken in Aragon is clearly Castilian, only with some little differences in vocabulary and a characteristic intonation that are due to the medieval extension of the Aragonese language and that presently is common to Aragon, most of Navarre, E of La Rioja, and Castilian provincias next to Aragon. These are the reasons why I edited that part. Estrolicador 02:56, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison with Other languages: Why Italian and French?

I think the table has too many languages. While the notes on Quebec French and Basque are interesting, and should be kept, no one doubts that standard French, Italian, and Spanish are different languages. There is already a general comparison between Romance languages at Romance languages. This article should focus on the languages that are more closely related to Spanish, such as Portuguese and Catalan. FilipeS 21:03, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, in several aspects Italian is closer to Spanish than Portuguese. Anyway, its true the article is about Spanish, so Portuguese and Catalá could also be removed. Mariano(t/c) 06:27, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Overall, I think there is no question that Spanish is closer to Portuguese than to Italian. Catalan is also an interesting language to compare it with, because it has been under the influence of Spanish for a long time, and it's a transition language between Iberian Romance and other Romance languages. Italian and French, though, are totally different beasts, IMO. FilipeS 12:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps is the pronunciation, but I believe I can understand much better Italian than Portuguese, especially spoken, but also written. Then again, it might also be my dialectic Spanish. Mariano(t/c) 13:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I was surprised to hear that you have more trouble understanding written Portuguese than Italian. I've heard from several Spanish speakers that they can read Portuguese with little difficulty even though they never studied it, and I can say the same about Spanish. Understanding written Italian is much more difficult for me -- too many strange words and unusual constructions. Of course, there is the occasional exception, where Italian and Portuguese happen to be closer to each other than either is to Spanish, but this is not the general rule. But you've studied Italian formally, haven't you? I can read French better than Italian -- but then I've studied it. ;-)

Going back to Spanish and this article, I haven't been involved in the writing of the table (not counting a couple of minor corrections), but it seems to me that, in an article about Spanish, a comparison between it, Catalan, Portuguese, and possibly Galician, Astur-Leonese, Extremaduran and Aragonese might be more interesting than a comparison with better known Romance languages, since the latter type of comparison can easily be found in many other places. Of course, this is just a suggestion. Regards. FilipeS 14:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison between Spanish and other Romance languages: Portuguese

The section on Portuguese seems a little bloated, compared to the rest of the article. If there are no objections, I think I'll move some of it to the specific article, Differences between Spanish and Portuguese. FilipeS 13:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of speakers

In the table it says that in Argentina there are 41,248,000 speakers of Spanish, however the article on Argentina says that the total population of Argentina is 39,921,833. The same goes for Puerto Rico and many other countries listed. What is the source for the first figures (and generally all figures in that table)?--Rudjek 20:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ethnologue has a detailed table of the numbers of Spanish speakers [1]. Would anyone object if I used these figures?--Rudjek 20:11, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Figures from Ethnologue are more than 10 years old! Differences in Argentine population reside probably in the year of estimation (2005/2006?); next census in 2011. Mariano(t/c) 07:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, the 2006 estimate in Argentina's infobox is 39,921,833. The figure of 41,248,000 speakers should be removed unless someone can explain how it fits with the census data. Old data are better than wrong data. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of D

The pronunciation examples at the end of the article have some questionable examples of the D pronunciation. For example.

Ayúdeme [aˈju.ðe.me]

It is certainly true that this pronunciation is quite common in the Spanish-speaking world. However I am not aware that this pronunciation has ever been considered by the Academy to be anything but a slang pronunciation. So far as I am aware the D still has only one official pronunciation. And indeed I believe that most people, even if they do speak this way, would also consider it slang (just as most people who say "ain't" would never claim this expression to be proper English).

I am not sure if this was an oversight or an attempt to deviate from the Academy's standards. Nevertheless, since Spanish is a standardized language (compared to, say, English) it is only proper to say that the Academy's standard represents the correct version of the language some aspects of the standard are not the most common usage of the language. This is not to say that the article cannot list alternate pronunciations (as it does) but representing these alternates as "standard Spanish" is not really valid. --Mcorazao 19:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm affraid I don't read IPA. What's wrong with such D? Mariano(t/c) 07:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
It's the "soft th" in English words such as this, and it is also quite correct in the case of Spanish. Voiced plosives between vowels are realized as very soft fricatives or approximants. Nowhere, that I know, is d pronounced [d] between vowels. I'm not aware of an official RAE pronunciation guide. In any case, we're describing Spanish, not the Academy's largely artificial version thereof, though both should be mentioned. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 11:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
The Academy is far more of a descriptive organisation these days than it used to be. In fact, the name it gives for the letter v varies from uve to ve to ve corta. So, there are some things to which there is no singular standard even according to the RAE. Re the letter d and its pronunciation according to the RAE:
f. Quinta letra del abecedario español, y cuarta del orden latino internacional, que representa un fonema consonántico dental y sonoro. Su nombre es de.
Feminine. Fifth letter of the Spanish alphabet and forth of the international Latin ordering, that represents a voiced dental consonant phoneme. Its name is de.
Note that both the IPA letters d and ð are voiced and dental and consonants. The only difference is that one is plosive, and the other is not (however, the RAE does not stipulate one or the other).
As Pablo said before, it depends on where the letter is. Betweem two vowels it's always soft, while at the begining or after another consonant is explosive. Mariano(t/c) 08:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm not an expert here. From the portion of the RAE's standards you've quoted, I would interpret this as saying that the academy interprets the letter as having one sound. Granted it is not very precise in what that sound is but I don't read this to imply that the speaker should vary pronunciation. --Mcorazao 03:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
SOAPBOX: I would like to say that I strongly diagree with the philosophy that this article (or any article documenting a major language) should treat the definitions specified by a recognized standards organization as something different from the standard language. One of the great accomplishments in the world in the last couple of centuries has been encouraging standards for the languages and reversing the trend toward languages diverging into mutual incomprehensibility. I personally believe the RAE's mission is a good one and, again not that I'm an expert, but I'm not under the impression that the academy's standard is radically different from what the average educated Spaniard speaks (and indeed part of the point of the standard is to slow the language drift). I believe that it is presumptuous to say that Wikipedia's authors have more of a right to define what is true Spanish than such a widely recognized organization as the RAE. I certainly think it is appropriate for an article like this to discuss regional variations from the RAE's standard and even to point out when most people speak differently from the standard in some cases. But saying anything more than that seems unjustified (and potentially contributing to the problem the RAE is intended to solve). --Mcorazao 03:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
No, what the RAE has is purposely ambiguous, note what it states for the letter t:
f. Vigésima tercera letra del abecedario español, y vigésima del orden latino internacional, que representa un fonema consonántico oclusivo, dental y sordo. Su nombre es te.
Feminine. Twenty-third letter of the Spanish alphabet and twentieth of the international Latin ordering, that represents a voiceless dental occlusive [or stopped] consonant phoneme. It’s name is te.
There, the position of the tongue is also mentioned. One of the reasons the RAE does not go into extensive detail with regards to the pronunciation of ‹d› is because it’s very variable, unlike that of ‹t› which is far more consistent amongst different dialects. The ‹r›, for instance, is extremely varied in different dialects, but with few exceptions it’s always a trilled consonant, but it makes note in different positions it can more than a single flap. The description of ‹n› is very complex — but note that it's pronunciation is quite consistent amongst speakers, even though it varies greatly depending on what’s around it in the word. However, ‹d› can receive a number of pronunciations, the most varied of which is actually the word-final position. Just ask around how many different pronunciations of ‹Madrid› there are. Some will end with [d], others [θ] (the most common in Madrid itself), [t], [ð], [h], or even [Ø]. But, the descriptionw ould be too complex for a simple dictionary. Also, the RAE does not exist to try to bring all dialects into a single one. That was tried in a number of languages (read: English in America) although not necessarily by academia, but now the general tendency is around preservation of dialects. All speakers of the different dialects of Spanish that I know of are quite mutually intelligible, just are all of those of English (a Deep Southerner would still be able to undersand a Kiwi or a Jersey cityboy or a Northern Highlander). The RAE exists to create what is known as “Standard Spanish” which one should interpret more as one does “Formal English”. It’s what’s used to aid mutual comprehension, especially in written works, but not to destroy other dialects. I’d imagine what I type doesn’t seem too different than any other English-speakers’ output, but in person I have a thick SAE accent and use a number of idioms that would confuse most. Just be careful next time you get on a soapbox that you understand what an organisation actually stands for.

I think Mcorazao may not have noticed that what the RAE describes are the phonemes of Spanish, not all its phones. FilipeS 12:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, it's not a "philosophy" of ours to "treat the definitions specified by a recognized standards organization as something different from the standard language." Those things are necessarily different. Nobody has given authority to the RAE to define what Spanish is, and that would be impossible anyway. Living languages, like living species, evolve, mutate and diverge. It's highly unlikely that dialects of Spanish will drift away from each other radically in the foreseeable future, barring some worlwide catastrophe that renders long-distance communications impossible; but the RAE has nothing to do with that. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)


Well, it certainly was not intention to offend and I think my comments may have been read in way that was not intended. Nevertheless I apologize for any offense. For what it's worth, I'm basing a lot of my interpretation on second-hand interpretations from others who have been formally educated in Spanish-speaking countries (mostly my father).
I do realize that the RAE describes phonemes, not phones. This obviously leaves open the possibility of vagueness in interpretation. Regarding the letter D specifically (and others like it) I still tend to interpret this to say that the academy's intent was to say that the letter should have a single phone although maybe they say that either [d] or [ð] is acceptable as long as you use just one (even though this is not how the average person actually speaks). Clearly, though, they are not saying [t] or [h] are acceptable (even though a lot of people speak this way). Nevertheless I'll defer to those of you that are more familiar with the Academy's guidelines as I am certainly not an authority.
Regarding the discussion as to how this article should be written and what the RAE stands for, these are two separate issues. As far as what the RAE stands for the web site says the following.

La Academia «tiene como misión principal velar porque los cambios que experimente la Lengua Española en su constante adaptación a las necesidades de sus hablantes no quiebren la esencial unidad que mantiene en todo el ámbito hispánico»

I think this agrees with your definition. The point to be clarified is this does NOT say that the academy's intent is to somehow document all the regional dialects (although I'm sure they do that as well as a secondary mission). Nobody has suggested that it is the academy's intent to stamp out any local dialects nor is it my intent. I would argue that an implied intent of the RAE is that the academy does not want these dialects to continue to diverge and, to the extent that these dialects continue to change as they inevitably will, they will tend to converge (you are welcome to debate if that is a losing proposition). For comparison one can observe that up until the 19th century the English language was diverging rapidly. As the 20th century has progressed, though, the English language has been largely reconverging due to the influence of education and television (and other technologies). One can choose to view this in a "glass is half empty" sort of way in that some of the "regional flavor" is being lost. But, realistically, the dialects were going to continue changing and it is a positive thing that they are becoming more mutually intelligible instead of less so. This has not happened to quite so great an extent with Spanish but it is happening and I'd argue that is similarly a good thing (I'm not arguing that the RAE has been the only reason but I'm sure it has contributed).
As far as what this article should be documenting, all I'm saying is that the article should be clear in distinguishing beween "standard spanish" and the regional dialects (with a bias toward the former unless explicitly stated otherwise). I think the article is mostly doing that so I've probably belabored this point far more than is necessary. :-) --Mcorazao 14:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Mcorazao, when the RAE says that "d" stands for a "voiced dental consonant" - notice that this applies to both [d] and [ð]! - my interpretation is that they mean that "d" represents one phoneme, /d/. However, this phoneme is realised as [d] in some positions within a word, and as [ð] in others (and it has even other realisations in more particular environments, in some dialects). Regards. FilipeS 18:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and in fact, to be accurate, the actual phone is seldom the fricative [ð], but the approximant [ð̞]. Three of the voiced obstruents in Spanish (b, d and g) are realized as approximants ([β̞], [ð̞] and [ɰ]) in all cases except when absolute initial (such as at the start of a sentence) or when following a nasal (the d also when following l); the other voiced obstruent (y) follows an analogous pattern but with plosive/affricate [ɟ]/[ʥ] for the fortis allophone and fricative [ʝ] for the lenis allophone. That is, the plosive allophone of these phonemes is in fact the least frequent one, and this allophonic distribution is not something dialectal at all, but a general and in fact very characteristic feature of the phonology of the language (an areal feature shared with other Iberian languages like Basque, Catalan and Galician), which moreover explains some other phonological phenomena, such as the hu-/gu- alternance ([w]/[ɰw]/[gw], note that [w] and [ɰ] differ in labialization while [ɰ] and [g] differ in degree of closure), or the extreme lenition of final -d (which can lead to its total loss, or to a bounceback fortition in order to avoid that loss by devoicing it into interdental [θ̟] in the Madrilene dialect). Also, pronouncing them as plosives where this is not allophonically appropriate is a clear marker of foreign pronunciation (e.g., Italians tend to speak very good Spanish due to the close resemblance of both languages, but their always-plosive way of pronouncing b/d/g is one of the things that most clearly betrays them as non-natives). If the user Mcorazao has any doubt about these facts, please care read any serious book about Spanish phonology; nowhere you'll find a description of Spanish pronunciation where the b/d/g phonemes are said to consist of just their plosive allophone. Uaxuctum 16:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Online translator for sentences

I just started taking spanish and my teacher tells us to find some phrases to translate so i came to wiki and found the yahoo translator, but this only does singe words can someone please help my out? Chuck61007 02:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Castilian

"Castilian" is given here as a synonym for "Spanish". I believe this is wrong. There is no question that in Spanish, when speaking of language castellano and español are interchangeable, but I believe this is not the case for their English-language equivalents. "Castilian" in English has the narrower connotation of specifically Castilian dialect; for example, the dialect of Andalusia is not "Castilian", but it is emphatically "Spanish". - Jmabel | Talk 01:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, claiming that "Castilian" means something different in English than castellano does in Spanish is a little pedantic. The fact of the matter is that both words have multiple meanings in both languages. FilipeS 12:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Why don't you just check a dictionary? Just because the two words look the same doesn't mean they do mean the same or are used in the same way in both languages. The American Heritage, the Merriam-Webster's and the Oxford, all agree in restricting the meaning of Castilian (AHD, M-W, OED) to the dialect of Castile and to the standard form of the Spanish language based on that dialect; restrictions that do not apply to the term Spanish (AHD, M-W, OED), which is defined as "the Romance language spoken in blah blah". Contrast this with the RAE dictionary, which clearly gives one definition of castellano as "la lengua española" (remarking that the term is used especially to contrast the Spanish language with other languages of Spain like Catalan, instead of to contrast the Castilian dialect with the other dialects of Spanish as in English usage). Uaxuctum 18:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The RAE dictionary says absolutely nothing about the English usage of the word "Castilian". IMHO, those English dictionaries you mentioned are simply incomplete. FilipeS 19:11, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Uh? I referenced the RAE dictionary for the definition of castellano (that's the Spanish word, not the English one), and I did it precisely to contrast the meaning of this Spanish word with the different meaning of the English word Castilian. OTOH, you can believe whatever you like, but Wikipedia is built on reliable sources, not on the personal opinions of editors, and "those English dictionaries" I referenced are among the foremost published authorities regarding the meaning and usage of English words. Besides, saying that a dictionary like the massive OED, which must be the largest dictionary of any language in the world, is "incomplete" just because it doesn't agree with your non-native, self-styled usage of a word, sounds funny to say the least. Uaxuctum 11:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Castilian is such an obscure word I doubt if one in a hundred native english speakers know of it, but everyone has heard of Spanish and knows what the word means, SqueakBox 19:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the word Castilian. If you restore it please give your justifications here, SqueakBox 01:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Mexico

New Mexico is not a nation and therefore cannot be included in the infobox in the list of nations, SqueakBox 20:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The United Nations is also not a nation. Should that be removed as well? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely, Spanish is not the language of the US, SqueakBox 21:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Slow down, man! I said United Nations. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]

The UN? What about the EU? The OAS? SqueakBox 22:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The consensus before was absolutely to keep the US out of this list. What has changed? hence the pov tag, SqueakBox 22:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Where's this consensus? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

In the previous archives that someone unintelligently made impossible to search through (by dividing them into more than one archive), SqueakBox 22:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The consensus was out of an argument by a minority pushing for US recognition, IMO POV pushing the US where it doesnt belong, hence the tag, SqueakBox 22:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

If a considerable minority speaks it then not including that is POV. The only discussion I could find in regards to Spanish in the US is aspects of Spanish as an official language. I'm sure you can find which archive it is in better than I could. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not willing to search through 5 archives though if there is no disagreement I am willing to combine the archives and search using Ctrl F. The problem is it makes it out that the US is a Spanish speaking country, which it isnt, SqueakBox 22:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I was gonna offer to do that. Go for itƵ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Do not go for it. The archives were not made for comfortable searches. The content of the archive is dumped there precisely because it's old and therefore not referenced often. However, if you feel there's a part of the past discussion about Spanish in the US that should be more readily accessible because the issue re-emerges every now and then, you're free to copy it from the archive and paste a summary at the top of this page, for reference. Nobody wants to wait for a single-file 1 MB archive to load, especially users of Wikipedia who don't have access to a high-speed Internet connection.
Don't remove a POV tag, ever, unless it's clearly a bad faith edit or a joke. By definition, if one editor feels an article is POV, then it is. The tag should only be removed when the matter has been settled. Same goes for "citation needed" tags; if one editor says it's not common knowledge, then a source is needed — better err on the side of caution. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 23:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree about the archives, not really sure why people want to make this stuff unsearchable. A 1 MB archive would download in approx 20 seconds with a dial-up, but unless we can merge the archives we cant search them either so you'll just have to take my word for it. If you split archives up it cant be referenced AT ALL but I know some users hate large pages, obviously not web searchers. Essentially what you are saying is we musnt have users waiting a few seconds for a page to download but its fine that they would have to spend hours searching through the archives that ahve been entirely randomly split up, which makes no sense. What do others think? SqueakBox 23:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The ciatation statement was sensibly removed. Spanish is clearly easier than the majoprity of languages for anglophones because the lettering is the same (viz a viz arabic, russian, chinese, etc), such an obvious statement that it needs neither sourcing nor appearing in the article which needs to be encyclopedic and assumes some intelligence on the part of the reader, SqueakBox 23:33, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Some of the archives have only two or three topics in them. That's a bit unnecessary. As for the citation regarding Spanish being easier to understand for Anglophones, that's going to need some sourcing. It's one thing to say it's easier to read because of the letters but easier to understand? I contest that. If anything, French or German would be easier to understand than Spanish. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 01:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Its easier to understand than foreign languages as a whole. Maybe there are half a dozen languages that are even easier to understand but there are probably a hundred spoken by a sizeable chunk of urban people that are far more difficult, and if a language is more difficult to read its definitely harder to understand. But the statement has been removed anyway, SqueakBox 01:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry. The statement needs a source. Until it gets one the tag stays. I'm being generous here because, quite frankly, the statement is so vague as to be meaningless. You've given three interpretations already. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

What needs a source is "Spanish is also arguably among the most extensively studied languages for long-term world backpackers who originate from Anglophone countries" and if you want to delete that as unsourced thaty is fine. The article doesnt claim any more that Spanish is relatively easy for Anglophones to grasp so there is no conflict here, SqueakBox 02:34, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, the article reflects our agreement. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I have now removed "Spanish is also arguably among the most extensively studied languages for long-term world backpackers who originate from Anglophone countries[citation needed], due to the extensive geographic area and number of countries in Latin America where Spanish is the primary language and English is not widely understood." Put it back if you want, SqueakBox 02:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map

The map citing the use of castellano re espanol is also incorrect as the majority term used in the south of the US is Spanish. Why is parts of the US coloured at all. I think the map needs changing or removing, certainly another reason to have the pov tag, SqueakBox 23:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

...People do speak Spanish in the United States. The map is shaded where a sizeable portion of Spanish speakers live. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 01:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

People speak Spanish in London as well, indeed all over the place, SqueakBox 01:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

A LOT more people speak Spanish in the Southern United States. Are you denying that?Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I dont think it makes any difference as other than in pockets English is far and away the dominanat language, it just reads like so much American conceit in an encyclopedia that suffers a huge systemic bias in favour of the States but we are writing an international encyclopedia. Lots of people speak Urdu and Hindi in England but their language pages dont glorify an English speaking country or try to make it an important source for these languages, and we shouldnt do the same with Spanish either, SqueakBox 02:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Considering that a considerable portion of the southwestern United States was part of Mexico for quite some time before it became part of the United States, I think there's quite a difference between Spanish in the US and Hindi/Urdu in England. I've read enough of the archives to agree that there is a consensus on the box on the side, but I don't think we need to adjust the map. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
The map should be adjusted as the fact that parts of the USA used to be a part of Mexico is irrelevant. Do you know how many times the borders of Europe have changed?
The shading on the map reflects the percentage of Spanish speakers, not the historical borders of the US. Unoffensive text or character 08:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

Talk:Spanish language/Archive02 looks like it contains a lot of previous discussion on the validity of the US as a Spanish speaking nation, SqueakBox 01:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Caribbean and the US

The combined population of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico comprises the majority of the Caribbean islands' population. I indicated that in my edit this time. As to the inclusion of the US, please keep in mind that there is a separate section of the infobox for listing those countries where the language is official. What's the purpose of the "Spoken in" section, then? Is it not for listing the places where the language is spoken by a majority or important portions of the population, irrespective of whether or not it is an official language? Thirty-seven million speakers in the US seems kind of an important portion to me. They make Spanish the de facto second language of the nation. SamEV 03:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Please source your Caribbean claim. Spanish is spoken in all sorts of places and there is no need to mention the States, its pure American centrism in an encyclopedia riddled with this problem, SqueakBox 03:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

O ye, of little faith... It's not even close. Per this source, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2119.html, the Caribbean and nearby island populations are as follows:
Anguilla 13,477 (July 2006 est.), Antigua and Barbuda 69,108 (July 2006 est.), Aruba 71,891 (July 2006 est.), Bahamas, The 303,770 (July 2006 est.), Barbados 279,912 (July 2006 est.), Bermuda 65,773 (July 2006 est.), British Virgin Islands 23,098 (July 2006 est.), Cayman Islands 45,436 (July 2006 est.), Cuba 11,382,820 (July 2006 est.), Dominica 68,910 (July 2006 est.), Dominican Republic 9,183,984 (July 2006 est.), Grenada 89,703 (July 2006 est.), Guadeloupe 452,776 (July 2006 est.), Haiti 8,308,504 (July 2006 est.), Jamaica 2,758,124 (July 2006 est.), Martinique 436,131 (July 2006 est.), Montserrat 9,439 (July 2006 est.), Netherlands Antilles 221,736 (July 2006 est.), Puerto Rico 3,927,188 (July 2006 est.), Saint Kitts and Nevis 39,129 (July 2006 est.), Saint Lucia 168,458 (July 2006 est.), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 117,848 (July 2006 est.), Trinidad and Tobago 1,065,842 (July 2006 est.), Turks and Caicos Islands 21,152 (July 2006 est.), Virgin Islands 108,605 (July 2006 est.) Total population: 39,232,814. Cuba + Dom. Rep. + P. Rico = 9,183,984 + 11,382,820 + 3,927,188 = 24,493,992 = 62.4% of 39,232,814. So just as I stated, the Hispanic Caribbean's population composes the majority of the Caribbean's population.
Secondly, though Spanish is spoken everywhere, it is not spoken by a double-digit percentage of the population just everywhere. In fact, currently, the only country where it IS spoken by so many people which is not yet in the infobox is the United States. SamEV 21:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

You said "with most of the area's population" which less than two thirds of the population cannot under any circumstances be considered. There are no surprises in your stats, its roughly what i figured. Around about 1 in 8 people speak Spanish in the States, which is a tiny percentage. So I support stating that a majority in the Caribbean speak Spanish but not most people, nor do I support the US in the info box as the percentage is well too low, I bet a higher percentage of people in Belize speak Spanish, SqueakBox 00:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

ACTUALLY Around about 1 in 11 or 12 people speak Spanish in the States, NOT (1 in 8), which is indeed a tiny percentage. Also please NOTE "SqueakBox" this article Does NOT take into account the Massive amount of English Dominant/Only Hispanics. To me this article is Errornoues in that it is assuming basically ALL of the US-Hispanics Population is Spanish Speaking, as a American of Hispanic Descent, and Working in the US Census, I can tell you that Data in this article is Highly Subjective at best, IN ERROR at worst. So I support stating that a majority in the Caribbean speak Spanish but not most people, nor do I support the US in the info box as the percentage is well too low, I bet a higher percentage of people in Belize speak Spanish, SqueakBox. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rick977 (talk • contribs).


I indeed said so and proved it: the Hispanic Caribbean's population comprises most of the Caribbean area's population.
Squeakbox, you need to calm down about "American centrism" crap. It's not POV to try to include mention of the millions of Spanish-speaking people in the US. I don't see much of a problem with not including the US in the side box because it is technically a minority; it's a stylistics issue that (as you pointed out) has a consensus behiind it. However, if you see Spanish in the United States, you'll find that Spanish is still quite prevalent in the US. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 04:18, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

"American centrism" isnt crap but a genuine problem in wikipedia, most of it from Americans confusing an international encyclopedia with anm American one. There is even a countering bias group dedicated to rooting out such problems of which I am a member, and there is no justification for ignoring this on any international article within the encyclopedia, SqueakBox 00:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I accept that there is a systemic American bias in Wikipedia but you have the burden of proof to show how it's an American bias to mention Spanish speakers in the United States. Otherwise, all you're doing is showing an anti-American bias which is just as POV as you accuse an American bias to be. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 00:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

It makes it sound like Spanish is what is spoken in the US, I dont believe 12% of people who can speak it (and doubtless considerably less who do so all the time) merits an entry, SqueakBox 03:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

You mean merits an entry in the box on the left, right? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:30, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I do, SqueakBox 16:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

To put a list of the 4 largest Spanish countires after Mexico and include the US is more of the same insidious POV as if somehow the US is more Spanish than smaller countries like Uruguay, El Salvador, etc. We do treat the US in a paragraph on its own and that is all that is needed along with the article on Spanish in the US. To pretend thjat the US is more Spanish than the hispanic countries is blatant POV and why I get so narked at this US POV pushing, SqueakBox 17:03, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Your interpretation is odd, b/c the whole purpose is not what appearance it gives, but to objectively list the countries where the language has the largest number of speakers. Even then, the percentage of US speakers is clearly stated, so as not to leave any false idea. Why then go out of your way to avoid mention of the US, which is in the top 5? (A mere 37 MILLION speakers, oh by the way) The US is a major center of Hispanophone activity, with large, influential Spanish language media. You even removed mention of the number of US speakers, which was properly sourced, from the body of the article! And you deny a bias? SamEV 21:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

This is my compromise? SqueakBox 23:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

If that's your compromise, what's the NPOV tag for? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 23:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

There is clearly still no consensus and until there is the POV tag stays, SqueakBox 18:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

To clarify my edit summary: the Census Bureau applies the term "US resident" to ALL persons residing in the US regardless of citizenship or immigration status. SamEV 01:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

We have a paragtraph on ther US, making out it is one of the bigghest Spanish speaking natioons around is insidious POV. Please stop it, SqueakBox 18:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

You had put the factfinder link in twice as it was already in the paragraph on the US. Given we say very little about the Spanish speaking nations in the section how come Belize and the US each get a whole paragraph and then you think that isnt enough, the US need a whole paragraph anfd half another paragraph, lol. We should give more focus to the Spanish speaking nations, almost none of which are 100% Spanish, instead of this obsession with nations that dont speak Spanish, SqueakBox 21:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UN

If we include the UN we must (a) do so for every language and (b) include the EU, OAS and any other international organisation where Spanish has official status. Lacking this we must not include the UN either, this particular edit is particularly unwelcome, SqueakBox 18:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be under the misapprehension that every language is an official language of the UN. Rather, "The UN has six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish) but only two working languages (English, French)." United Nations#Languages SamEV 19:21, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes well someone had included the EU and not the UN at English language, I honestly dont believe that even if it were the only official language at the UN that the UN should be included in the infobox. How can you compare an organisation to a sovereign state? SqueakBox 21:12, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's quite important that Spanish is an official language of the UN. Considering the impact that international bodies like the UN and NATO have had on the state and nature of war in the past 60 years, I'd say it's not just "an organization" (check your anti-UN bias at the door). If we're going to put it anywhere in the box on the right, it goes in the "official language of" section. If you think there are other important organizations that Spanish is the official language of, those can merit inclusion as well. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

What I think is it should be mentioned in the body of the work and not in an infobox, especially as this appears not to be a practice in the other official UN languages. I think the UN is arguably the most important organisation in the world but is still an organisation with no sovereignty, SqueakBox 21:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

And indeed it is in the opening sentence off the geographical distribution section. I think that is a prominent enough place to be, SqueakBox 21:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jews and Filipinos

If the Sephardic Jews spoke Spanish untilt the holocaust that would indicate they do not speak it now which is what the spoken infobox is exclusively interested in. The fact that Spanish was spoken in the Phillipinnes is also irrelevant as this box is strictly for current usage, SqueakBox 17:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

No, there are Sephardi Jews (as many as 100,000 in Israel) that still speak their distinctive dialect of Spanish to this day, and there are efforts to keep that linguistic legacy alive in their communities (a legacy which moreover is of great significance to the study of the history of Spanish, since Ladino preserves certain archaic features from the medieval period); even though most of the Sephardim now living in Israel have embraced Hebrew. Before their near-extermination in WWII, there were thriving Sephardic communities in many places around the Mediterranean arc, communities where Judæo-Spanish was the main everyday language. The most notable of which was maybe Salonica in Greece (then part of the Ottoman Empire), where the Sephardim were the largest ethnic group, making Spanish the dominant language in the streets of that city for a long time—until 50,000 of them were killed in the holocaust, which virtually wiped them out of the place. As for the Philippines, Spanish was its official language for four centuries, as the islands were part of the Spanish Empire (even the very name "Philippines" refers to the Spanish king Philip II), and consequently had large numbers of native and second-language speakers there, making it of great cultural significance to the islands and influencing Tagalog and other Philippine languages to the point that a substantial part of their nowadays everyday vocabulary is of Spanish origin. The situation changed when the U.S. got hold of the territory at the beginning of the 20th century following the Spanish-American War, and started conscious efforts to erradicate the usage of Spanish from the islands and replace it with English. But even with the anti-Spanish policies put forth by the U.S. occupation, which finally led to the demotion of Spanish to non-official status in 1973, the language is still natively spoken there by an amount of people (including mestizos and ethnic Spaniards born in the Philippines), who speak a distinct dialect and take pride in that historical legacy (to the point of organizing efforts to re-establish it as an official language). A study by the Instituto Cervantes of Manila and the Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language, even puts the actual figure of current Spanish-speakers in the Philippines in not just a few thousands but in the order of up to two or three millions (including 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- and 4th-language speakers, see the Spanish in the Philippines article for reference). The point is, these two still-existent Spanish-speaking communities, regardless of their (disputable) current size, are not at all comparable to some random scattered clusters of speakers like the bunch of Spanish expatriates in, say, London (who do not speak a distinct dialect nor form a cohessive community with a significant cultural or political influence in the place, and thus there isn't and needn't be an article about "Spanish in London" unlike the very relevant articles on Spanish in the Philippines and Judæo-Spanish); these communities represent the current remnants of two historically important areas of the Spanish-speaking world. The "Spoken in" box should give an idea of the geographical spread of the language, and by leaving the current Spanish-speaking Filipinos and Sephardim out, one is failing to account for two significant areas of the "Hispanosphere" where the language is still spoken and where it has been historically very important (hell, there is even an official Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language belonging to the Association of Spanish Language Academies). Someone having a look at the box for quick reference would be left with the wrong impression that Spanish hasn't significantly reached the Far East or the eastern Mediterranean area. By the way, another significant omission in the box that I have just noticed is the Western Sahara, which was part of Spain until 1975 and where there are still large numbers of Spanish speakers (both native and second-language). Uaxuctum 20:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

All this should absolutely be in the article but not in the infobox. I consider the lack of Spanish in ther Phillipinnes to be a genuine tragedy for both SE Asia and Latin America. I think you are wrong about London, there is indeed a community in East London, SqueakBox 20:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

You haven't addressed my point: The communities of Spanish speakers in the Philippines and in Israel may be relatively small (depends on what statistics you take —one study by two official bodies puts the total figure of current Spanish speakers in the Philippines at over 3 million— and on how you look at them —I don't think 100,000 speakers in Israel is precisely a small figure). But those communities regardless of their size are significant, while the one in East London is not. Why? The very fact that there is an official Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language tells of how significant this community is for the language, and for its part the state of Israel created in 1997 an official body (the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino) to preserve and standardize Judæo-Spanish, which shows that the Spanish speakers form a significant community in Israel. There is substantial academic interest in them; that's why there are individual Wikipedia articles dealing with Spanish in the Philippines and with Judæo-Spanish—they are significant, and in my opinion the infobox should mention all significant communities, not just those with the most speakers. On the other hand, nothing comparable at all can be said about the Spanish speakers in East London. Could you cite a book dealing with the topic of the Spanish-speaking community in London? Are there scholars studying the Spanish dialect spoken in London? Is there an official academic body looking over "Londonian Spanish"? Has Spanish ever been an official language in London? Would anyone ever think of including London in a map of the "Hispanosphere"? No. To start with, there is no such thing as a "Londonian dialect of Spanish". The Spanish speakers in London do not form a significant community for the "Hispanosphere", they are just a bunch of expatriates; so there is no need whatsoever to cite them in the infobox, unlike the Philippine and Sephardic Spanish-speaking communities which are significant for the language. Uaxuctum 00:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

They still arent notable enough to go in the infobox, to state Spanish is spoken in the Philippines is not really true and will give people a false impression while the Sephardic Jews aren't even a nation. And BTW I am not suggesting the Spanish speaking community in East London should go in there either, SqueakBox 00:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Saying that Spanish is spoken in the Philippines will not give a false impression at all; firstly because it is a fact (so much so that one of 22 Academies of the Spanish language is that of the Philippines, and documents in Spanish are still admitted by the Philippine courts), secondly because Spanish is culturally very important for the Philippines (having been its official language for four centuries), and thirdly because there is even a movement pushing to re-establish its official status in the country. In fact, what is POV is to arbitrarily leave this notable community of speakers out of the infobox, which creates the false impression that Spanish is not spoken anywhere in Asia. "The Sephardic Jews aren't a nation", so? Firstly, this is disputable (what constitutes a nation?); secondly, the Jews have a state of their own and the Sephardi Jews are part of it; thirdly, it would be absurd to say the criterion to be included in the infobox is to be a nation (what about the Catalans and the Valencians, are they nations? Some say yes, some say not; they certainly do not have a state of their own. Should they be excluded from the infobox in Catalan language if they aren't a "nation"?). You are yet to provide a single serious argument to support your view that these communities are not notable for the Spanish language, while I have already given you plenty of arguments to prove they are notable, arguments that so far you have refused to address. Uaxuctum 01:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

The Sephardic Jews arent even a region, just a group of people. According to the wikipedia article on the Philippines arabic is equally important in terms of official language and this nation doesnt appear in Arabic language. Indeed reading the wikipedia article leaves me with the impression that Spanish is not notable enough to go into the infobox. "The use of Spanish in the Philippines was the original official language of the country for more than three centuries, but was used mainly by the educated illustrados (including José Rizal) or self taught natives and the Spanish authorities. Spanish was the language of Philippine Revolution, and the 1899 Malolos Constitution proclaimed it as the official language. Following the American occupation of the Philippines, its use declined, especially after 1940. Currently, only a few Spanish Mestizo families speak it as their first language, though many others use it together with Tagalog and English." is what the wikipedia article on this antion says and that just confirms to me that this country has no place in the infobox, SqueakBox 01:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I live in the Philippines and I have yet to see a Spanish speaker in España Boulevard; I guess the insistence of people here to add the Philippines is pathetic and doesn't change matters, the Philippines is a not a Spanish-speaking country. --Howard the Duck 10:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I find the comment stating that if you remove the Philippines from the infobox you make it look like as though Spanish is not spoken anywhere in Asia just goes to show that Spanish really is not spoken in Asia and that Asia should not be included as Spanish speaking region in the article.

[edit] Language box

I move that we have a policy of general reversion in regards to the language box to the side. If anyone wants to make any changes to it they should explain it in the talk page and get consensus first. It's the general Wikipedia policy to discuss changes first anyway. I for one will begin reverting with the following edit summary:

Rv: please discuss changes to the language box in the Talk page.

Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 01:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, SqueakBox 19:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  • oops, sorry about that, I edited because Mexico is not included in the infobox as spanish-speaker country. I see less than half of South America, most of Central America, a good portion of the Caribbean, but from North America just the United States, where is Mexico?? JC wanna talk? 20:55 31 ene, 2007 (PST)

We shouldnt say less than half as it is obvious POV and in the case of South America simply untrue as well, SqueakBox 05:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish is not mainly called 'castellano' in Spain, but 'español'

It is not true that most people in Spain say 'castellano' as is drawn in the figure. That figure is in contradiction with what is said in the main text of the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alx123 (talk • contribs) 16:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

Well, we can't say it for sure. Is Spain each one uses the word he or she thinks is better in each case.--212.183.251.20 01:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)Cacomanrique

Is either term capitalized? I'm under the impression that they are not but there seems to be a slow revert war going on regarding the capitalization. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Names of languages in Spanish are not capitalized as in English (and neither are demonyms). The rules on the use of uppercase letters in Spanish are given in fine detail at the RAE's Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (see section 6.7) —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 00:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of "ch" in Castillian

I've noticed that in Castillian spanish the "ch" doesn't seem like [tʃ] but something kinda like [tɕʰ], but I'm not an expert, so could anyone confirm this? If so, Do you think the examples, phonologies and such should reflect that? --Sergiusz Szczebrzeszyński |talk to me||what i've done||e| 04:43, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I doubt that it is, but I suppose that if it were the case then the narrow phonetic transcriptions of Castlian might need to change accordingly. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]
So the "ch" is the same as in Latin America? --Sergiusz Szczebrzeszyński |talk to me||what i've done||e| 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I've never noticed a difference but I can't tell the difference between [ʃ] and [ɕ]. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 09:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Ahh well, thanks for the response though :D --Sergiusz Szczebrzeszyński |talk to me||what i've done||e| 18:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm certain I've read somewhere before that some speakers of Castilian Spanish have a palatal stop [c] or something close to it for <ch>. I'm not sure if this is related to what you're talking about or not, Sergiusz, but......

Also, I can't remember where I've read this. So I'm not sure how helpful this is.

And I'm fairly sure Latin America mostly has [tʃ]. That's how I've always seen it described anyway, and that's how it sounds to me. --Miskwito 00:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I am a native speaker of Castilian Spanish and you are right that our "ch" is not [ʧ]. Certainly the phone we use for our "ch" doesn't sound to my ear to be the same as the one most Latin Americans use. What a Mexican says for "ch" (as well as the "ch" of English) sounds to me like what I would rather spell "tch", because I find it less palatal and more alveolar than ours (it sounds perceptibly "harder", i.e. non-palatalized, to my ear). Latin Americans say [ʧ] (plain domed postalveolar), while ours is basically [ʨ] (palatalized postalveolar), although it can become even more palatal when surrounded by back vowels (almost like a [c], but not quite). Both absolutely without any kind of aspiration, which is a type of phonation completely alien to Castilian speakers (it took me ages to master it for English pronunciation); aspiration occurs in Spanish only in those dialects with heheante pronunciation (like some varieties of Andalusian and Caribbean Spanish), where p/t/k become aspirated in the vicinity of elided consonants (e.g., "estos" [ˈe̞ˑst̪o̞s] becomes [ˈɛˑht̪ɔh] > [ˈɛ̥ˑt̪ʰːɔ]). I'd go for transcribing the Castilian allophone of "ch" as [ʨ]; Japanese "ch" sounds pretty similar to ours. Uaxuctum 12:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the subtle differences between those sounds, but I think you should explain what exactly you mean by "Castilian Spanish", maybe what you are saying applies to the s-aspirating dialects of Southern Castile (Madrid, La Mancha), or maybe to the northern non-s-aspirating dialects. They're too different to lump together. --Jotam 12:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
For the difference between those sounds, check the relevant articles ([ʧ], [ʨ]) and hear the sound samples for the corresponding fricatives: [ʃ] vs. [ɕ] — the postalveolars are domed, the alveolo-palatals are palatalized. By "Castilian Spanish" I mean Castilian Spanish, the dialect of northern Spain (e.g., Burgos, Valladolid) which has traditionally been the basis for the standard language and is still the prestige dialect in Spain, and where aspiration of any kind is unknown and the sound of "ch" is alveolo-palatal. The dialects spoken in the southern half of Castile, more or less from Madrid to the south (although note that in Madrid the majority of the population is not autochthonous but comes from other places in Spain or abroad), are transitional between Castilian and Andalusian, sharing features with both. In formal or careful speech they will speak mostly Castilian, which is the prestige pronunciation in the whole of Spain, but in colloquial speech they may throw in some features shared with Andalusian, particularly the tendency to aspirate final "s". However, when this happens in Madrid the sound is often the harsher one of "j" rather than a soft "h" aspiration (e.g., a typical Madrilene thing is to say ej que for es que, and another typical Madrilene thing is to devoice final "d" into "z"); this kind of "aspiration" (rather, velarization) usually only affects the coda consonant and does not lead to the aspiration of adjacent plosives as in "hardcore" Andalusian. Also, the phonemes "c/z" and "s" are distinguished in the dialects of Madrid or Toledo as in Castilian, there's no seseo or ceceo there unlike in typical Andalusian. Although they are traditionally yeístas (I think I read somewhere that yeísmo actually originated in the Toledo area), unlike in northern Castile where yeísmo is a fairly recent phenomenon (but nowadays already widespread, especially in the urban centers and among the younger generations). Uaxuctum 19:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, your explanation sounds good overall. My question stems from the fact that when I see the "Castilian dialect" tag, very often it ends up being used about the Madrid speech. Apparently Madrid people don't feel comfortable about being "a transitional area between Castilian and Andalusian dialects". About aspiration being unknown in the Duero valley, I think that was true 50 years ago, I'm not so sure about now. --Jotam 17:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] readd it

Please put the yahoo dictionary back up under references, I and other use this to a great extent. Also someone could readd the dictionary section all together. Chuck61007 21:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

IN case any one wants to know the link is http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/ Chuck61007 03:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture of the map is wrong.

The picture of titled Castellano-Espanol should be removed. It is flawed. Every country where Spanish is spoken knows that Spanish is Castellano and vice versa.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dominiward (talk • contribs) 17:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

Agreed and removed. The map was badly formatted, making a mess of the article, is highly subjective and arguably OR and elucidates bnothing useful about Spanish, SqueakBox 17:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish speakers in USA

In the United States, 12% are spanish native speakers in 2005 (because they speak spanish at home).[2] 42.7 Million people are Hispanics (according to census in 2005). 56% of all Hispanic households are Spanish dominant, 26% are equally Spanish and English bilingual and 18% are English only or more than Spanish (Source: Synovate, 2006)[3].

Then, the spanish speakers in USA are 36 millions more or less, not 27. Even, spanish can be spoken by more than this figure.

[edit] Spanish is not spoken on all continents

Where did you get this information from? It is very misleading.

The continents where it is not spoken are Australia (although there are trivial pockets of Spanish-speaking expatriates) and Antarctica (trivial since it's a mostly deserted continent with no countries, although there are teams of Spanish-speaking scientists working there). It is spoken in the other 5 continents: Europe (Spain), Africa (Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, the Canary islands), North America (Mexico, U.S., Cuba, Panama, etc.), South America (in all countries except Brazil and the Guyanas) and Asia (thousands of speakers remain in the Philippines and around 10% of the Sephardim in Israel speak Judæo-Spanish). Uaxuctum 19:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
You can not say that Spanish is spoken in Asia just because a few thousand people speak it in the Philippines or that it is spoken in Antarctica just because it is used by some scientists as you would have to say that every single language in the world is spoken on every continent as I am sure that every language is represented by at least one person on every continent.
Australia is in Oceania and so is Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in spanish) a Chile possesion, the official language of this island is spanish.JC 11:40 31 ene, 2007 (PST)

[edit] Question about Spanish in the Philippines

Hi, I have a question for everyone? If Spanish is not spoken or used in the Phlippines, then where does this statistic come from ("According to the Philippine Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, there are roughly 3,180,000 million speakers in the islands'). Don't tell me that all of this are fake, hey guys. And also i think 0.01% is good enough source to be added in the info_box because, Spanish is still spoken in the islands as a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th language in the population. It is however used mainly by Spanish, Latino expatriates and Filipino-Spanish mestizos despite the small percentages. It wouldn't be breaking the law, since there are percentages and total amount to support the case. It still counts. The arguement issue is based upon where the language are spoken; It is not about how many speaks it. There's nothing wrong with it, and besides the Phlippines is a member of the Latin Union Organisation whether you guys will like it or not. So What seems to be everyone's problem about Spanish in the Phlippines? Saludos. --Ramirez

  • Reply: As I said before we are simply stating and defining, where the language is spoken. We are not talking about how many speaks it.. Ramirez
    • Sure it is spoken by 0.01% as per the latest census. Now as said on Template talk:Infobox Language/Usage, the "region" parameter is used for geographic region in which it is mainly spoken. Now, can you tell me that 0.01% or even 3 million (incl. 3rd and 4th lang. speakers) in a 80 million+ population is a main language? --Howard the Duck 08:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

No. No one is arguing with Spanish as the main language in the PHlippines. We are not talking, about how many speaks it. As i said before, we are trying to define were the language is spoken. The Phlippines is a member of the Latin Union orginsation, so therefore your country used or associate Spanish in anyway..User:Ramirez72

Yeah, but the thing is, the infobox guideline states that the countries that use it as the main language should be added on the infobox. All others are at the main body. --Howard the Duck 08:50, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply:No one will ever win this debate!! :) And also Were are not talking about the main languages (official languages). The Official languages info_box is clarely define. We are talking about where it is spoken and who associates with it...User:Ramirez72

Since you yourself said that Spanish isn't a main language in the Philippines, and the official infobox guidelines say that only countries which have the language as their main language (IMHO, a significant minority must speak it, and 0.01% doesn't cut it), ergo the Philippines shouldn't be in the infobox. You are inventing a new guideline for the infobox, you may add a new discussion there but as long as your guideline isn't adopted the Philippines shouldn't be at the infobox. --Howard the Duck 09:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Look bro! I never invented anything, all i was saying was I was only defining where the language was spoken that's all..

I never put the Philippines in the info-box in the first place.. When I first discovered wikipidea almost a year ago, the philippines was already listed here. No-one had a problem then... so why now.. User:Ramirez72

Hate to jump in here guys, but wouldn't this be the equivalent of putting Mexico under the English infobox? The percentages of speakers seems to be similar. Part Deux 09:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I've got no problem with it. User:Ramirez72

No problem with what? Removal of the Philippines from the infobox? (You can use colons so we would know who'd you're replying to.) --Howard the Duck 09:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply:I'm not talking about that, I was replying to User:Part Deux, my appoligized! User:Ramirez72

So what's your position now on the Philippines issue? So does 0.01% merit a main language? Or are you inventing another guideline? --Howard the Duck 09:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply: That's Bullshit hommes! I never said 0.1 % is a main language! I think you evented that..All i said before was The philippines has the amounts of Speakers despite the low percentages. User:Ramirez72

Look I didn't say you said that, I'm asking. So with all of the rules against you, you'd drop the bs-bomb on me? So I ask yet again, don't evade the question this time, is 0.01% of a country's population a main language, so that it can be added on the infobox? --Howard the Duck 10:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

No. User:Ramirez72

Why not? Part Deux 10:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply: 0.1% speakers is not alot for a Philippine population over 90 million, so therefore it does not constitute a main language.. Look Why are you asking me this question!!, You should asked the person who listed the phlippines in the first place. I'm not a professional language teacher or a mathematician!! What do you think?? Since this discussions is for everybody?? Ramirez

It's not even 0.1%, it's 0.01%. As for why I'm asking you this question, you were the one who's insisting why the Philippines should be on the infobox, and even reverted me. I'll be removing it now. --Howard the Duck 10:28, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Asking because you're present, and the other guy is not. 0.1% seems very little; by this logic, we could mention China under Arabic, French, English, etc. Part Deux 10:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply: To: Howard, If you wanna removed it, well that's fine by me!!!! I don't care. It's not my country.. I'm just doing my job as wiki-contributer and vandalpatroler. I'll just let you know this, the Phlippines will appear again in the info-box, coz other unanonimous users will put it back again!!!!just letting you know.. adios!!!User:Ramirez72

If ever it returns I'd happily revert and add an invisible HTML comment to prevent its addition again, unless it's your sockpuppets, that is. --Howard the Duck 10:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply:So your accusing me of being a sockpuppter for letting u know the outcomes!! Fuck You Carajo!! Don't ever accused me of anything..I have never done.. Fuck You, Vatoo>>!!!User:Ramirez72

I didn't say you have sockpuppets, I said you may use sockpuppets to circumvent the discussion. And dropping the f-bomb would almost certainly lead to a block. --Howard the Duck 11:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Lol, had a ball reading the debate. Anyway, should we change the map? According to that map, the Philippines is still there and Luzon & Visayas are medium-dark green while Mindanao is light green. Under the map rules, medium-dark would be "Spanish is the second-most important language" (I HIGHLY doubt that) and light would be "Spanish-speakers constitute a large minority population". While there is a small, unreferenced blurb in the English legend, the colors grossly misrepresent the Philippines. Shrumster 21:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the map should definitely should be changed. --Chris S. 23:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
If there's a place in the Philippines where Spanish is predominantly spoken, where is it? Chavacano speakers don't count. --Howard the Duck 04:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Spanish is not spoken in the Philippines -- period. Maybe the article should make some kind of reference to the historical ties between the Philippines and the Spanish language and report Chabacano as a Spanish-based creole, but I'm afraid that not much more. Please keep in mind that while verifiability, not truth, is the threshold for sources, this merely means you're not obliged to check whether what the source says is true. It doesn't mean that demonstrable falsities should be kept just because their source is verifiable.
All sources stating Spanish has 3 M speakers in the Philippines should be dismissed because while they're verifiable, they're not reliable. However those who insist on keeping that absurd figure seem to be very stubborn. I'm afraid this will have to go all the way up to arbitration. --Abenyosef 22:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply: That's your opinion. Everyone is intitled to their opinion, that's fair enough. And besides your not even full blooded Latino so why are you so curious about the Spanish language. Be fair..Please Stick to facts. :) Ramírez 16:30 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply:Ramirez72 is right. Everyone has their own opinions. Everyone must respect each other's opinions even though you do not agree at some point, and besides facts are provided :) --Cajamarca express 11:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
To: All you guys and girls!, Don't blame Ramirez72 for everything. He is just doing his job. You are in titled to your opinion and there is nothing wrong with that. We live in a Democratic world. So we need to express what we feel.. Thanks!-- Gonzalo 23:34 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The intoduction is a complete mess

Please support your statements with evidence and use accurate figures. You can't just say that Spanish is spoken by a large population in Europe. The three working language of the European union are English, French and German. So much for Spanish!

German? (lol), not so! French and English were the main languages and now all 23 are official. german never got a look in, SqueakBox 00:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry SqueakBox. English, French and German are the working languages of the EU's main institutions.

Have a look at http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/02/23/eu_official_urges_worker_language_skills/

[edit] Full protection

I've temporarily and fully protected the page due to an edit war. It has to do with putting Philippines in the list of countries were Spanish is spoken. Does anyone have a reliable source? So far, the most reliable source is Ethnologue which cites the 1990 Philippine Census as stating that there are 2,456 speakers of Spanish - this is considerably less than .01% of the total Philippine population. I have census figures for 2000 and Spanish is no longer mentioned. There is a source that has been floating around that says that there are three million speakers of Spanish. However, the website given is not a reliable source. Any help would be appreciated. Muchísimas gracias. --Chris S. 04:46, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

He vivido toda la vida aquí en Filipinas y nunca, nunca he encontrado ningun grupo de filipinos de cualquier raza que hablan castellano entre sí. The Spanish all of us here know is fragmented, horribly rudimentary, sounds like that of five-year olds, and the "all of us" I'm referring to is, what, a hundred, five hundred people? (Of course I'm just guessing; more reliable figures exist out there. Hopefully.) Even the Spaniards and all those other white people from my hometown of Cebu speak only Cebuano, and English, occasionally Filipino. The thing is, we've never had the need to speak Spanish in everyday life, so recent generations have started to forget it simply because it has never had any practical value. (Remember high-school calculus? I thought so.) We don't live apart from society, after all. We live among other Filipinos, and Filipinos do not speak Spanish. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.213.180.32 (talk) 10:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC).
I belong to a YahooGroup where there are Filipinos who grew up in Spanish-speaking families. I'd say they are the exception rather than the rule. I speak Spanish but since my parents and grandparents don't speak it, I learned it here in America and not in the Philippines; I, too, have yet to meet a Spanish-speaking Filipino. --Chris S. 00:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
My father natively spoke Spanish. (My grandma could speak Valenciano.)There are grey haired folks (old folks) who speak it. There is a mass celebrated in Spanish at San Agustin school chapel. Some of my younger friends whom I know can speak it, refuse to do so anymore. I've travelled to some provinces like Capiz and Bacolod and encountered older folks who speak it to me. I know some people from Iloilo who do.--Jondel 12:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I removed the "3 million speakers" claim once already. It's completely ridiculous; every reliable source says Spanish is spoken by a tiny minority in the Philippines. IIRC the "3 million" website exists to advocate restoration of Spanish in the Philippines and is not representative at all. An edit war between one contributor with a POV and everyone else is not an edit war; it's vandalism by the lone contributor, and it may be reverted without more explanation, as the matter is clear. I'm going to unprotect the page and keep an eye on it. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 15:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
PS: Probably due to the same advocacy folks, large parts of Spanish language in the Philippines are indistinguishable from fiction... Some are biased, some are plainly untrue, some are wishful thinking. Please help with that! —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 16:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply: Not really, that's your opinion. As Ramirez72 said before, everyone has their own opinions. Your intitled to your opinions. Besides facts are provided and are there to support the statements. Lets live in peace. Thanks! :) --Cajamarca express 10:19 15 February, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The reason why this page is semiprotected is that the introduction is extremely bias

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.148.185 (talk)

[edit] Change the introduction please

Currently it keeps on repeating the same point over and over. Spanish is the most important language in the world. In fact it is the most studied language in the world making it the most important language. It is such an important language because it is spoken by many people and this in turn makes the world's most important language. Have I mentioned that Spanish is the most important language in the world? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.148.185 (talk)

[edit] Put the actual country names!!!

Under the spoken in column, instead of putting the general reason of where it's spoken, the country names should be used. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.146.36.50 (talk) 03:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Introduction

Hi! The article's introduction seems a bit POV and needs cleaning up. It also needs clarifications, including providing facts to backup the statements listed on the page. The POV statements includes, " Spanish is spoken in many countries in Europe and also has a large amounts of Spanish speakers in Europe". In my opinion the only large Spanish speaking nation in Europe is Spain. Correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks! -- Cajamarca 19:00,7 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply:The article needs to expand more, it's not enough at this stage. Must provide more sources or fact informations so the reader can gained more knowledge of what the topic is talking about. It may also require some clean up, since there are POV statements provided in the page. POV's need to be supported with fact informations.. Thanks! --Cajamarca 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish is the most simple of all European languages

This should be in the introduction as it is a very important point.

Reply: Yeah right, That's just POV, So what if it is simple..No need to add Point of Views..And beside, It's unnessary.--Ramírez 16:00 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply: Hi, To the unknown user. Welcome to the Spanish talk page?. I think Ramirez72 is right. There is no need to mentioned "Spanish is the most simple of all European languages" in the introduction or in the article section. This is due to the fact that it sounds a bit POV. But if you have sources or facts to back up your statements, then you add it into the article if you wish. Note--You must have facts. Thanks!!--Cajamarca express 11:11 14 February 2007 (UTC)

These websites are just two of many that claim that Spanish is easy. http://www.micheloud.com/FXM/LA/LA/spanish.htm and http://webinstituteforteachers.org/~kgeorge/why_spanish.html. It is the only
European language that has no irregular plurals. For example, in English there are many types of plurals such as children, teeth, women, oxen etc. The spelling is very easy and one can learn to read Spanish in a matter of hours. Compared to say French, Italian and Portuguese Spanish spelling is much easier to learn. When comparing things you just use mas in Spanish. The only irregularity occurs with mejor and peor. Other European langauges are more complex. Simple put it is extremely simply. Spanish has fewer irregular verbs than German, Russian, Greek and countless other languages. If you want facts try and study any other language in the world. If you have had the experience of learning a language that is more simple write the name of it down and the reasons that make it more simple than Spanish. Learning the gender is easy as most nouns end in either -o or -a and adjectives are regular as well they end in -o when masculine and -a when feminine. I know words like joven are slightly different but this is nothing compared to what happens in Slavic languages and German.

Reply: Hi, to the unknown user! welcome once again! Thanks for providing the sources. Yeah that's fair enough! I have no problems with it. You can add it if you wish. Thanks!--Cajamarca express 11:41 15, February 2007 (UTC)

"Easy to learn" and "simple" are not quite the same thing, are they? Anyway, it's easy to claim that a language is "easy" if you just look at its easy features. How about the Spanish subjunctive, or Spanish reflexive verbs? FilipeS 15:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this (perhaps having sweated blood trying to learnt he language). Spanish is an easy language to figure out how to pronounce based on simple rules in a way that certainly French or English arent, but that dopesnt make it easy to pronounce. In my 9th year learning Spanish I find to get to that next stage beyond being fluent of being grammatically correct is extremely difficult. Besides which the sources furnished say cant bve used to refence that Spanish is the simpleast European language to learn as that is not the thrust of either page, indeed I cant even find where it says this on either page, the webinstitute page doesnt even contain the word simple while the Micheloud doesnt use simple in this context, SqueakBox 19:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I also read in a newspaper a bit ago an expert on European languages saying that Spanish was the hardest romantic language for English speakers to learn, SqueakBox 19:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that Spanish is the hardest Romance language to learn. Spanish is the simplest as most European language have more complicated reflexive verbs than Spanish. With Spanish all you use is se as in Como se llamas llama. In German on the other hand you must choose between mir and mich. Don't get me started about the subjunctive. Like I said before if you know a simpler language (apart from esperanto or any other such language) let me know. In response to SquekBox's comments I would just like to say that it is extremely difficult to become fluent in any of the world's languages including Esperanto and Spanish as fluency is something different to knowing grammar and words.
Have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Battery.

I find the se as in se dice etc to be one of the hardest things to get right in Spanish. The whole concept of ser and estar also only exists in Spanish and Portuguese and definitely all other European language speakers really need to get their heads around. I can think of at least 2 Germans (one in a letter to Honduras This Week) saying how much more difficult Spanish is for German people to learn than is English. Part of the problem is it depends on one's native language, all romantic speakers find Spanish easier to learn than non-romantic speakers do, SqueakBox 22:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, the example is wrong. It is either Cómo se llama (note the diacritic) or, in an informal setting Cómo te llamas. And I'm not even mentioning the Rioplatense Spanish Cómo te llamás. User:Ejrrjs says What? 23:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think he's referring to "se" as a general term for the pronouns that comes before verbs in Spanish. JuJube 23:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
But even then you have to "know" if a verb is reflexive or not. User:Ejrrjs says What? 11:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Of course he is. He's also showing, though, that he can't even write proper Spanish. (What's that about it being an easy language, again...? :p) FilipeS 23:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Do you not understand that it is a easy language compared to other languages. I never said that one could learn Spanish perfectly! I will repeat what I said earlier. If there is an easier language than Spanish write down the name of that language and explain why. If you can't do this then stop insisting that Spanish is harder than any other language. The whole thing with se dice is nonsense as this occurs in the Czech langauge as well. All in all Spanish is much more simple. I would love to hear those German speakers pronounce English words let alone write something. I apologise for my typo when I wrote Como se llamas instead of como te llamas or como se llama. Would you like me to point out all of your spelling mistakes? For example, it is incorrect to say I can think of at least 2 Germans saying how much more difficult Spanish is for German people to learn than is English. Furthermore, Spanish is so simple that you understood what I meant despite the typo. On the other hand in German a little mistake would change the meaning of the sentence. Ich vorstelle mich means I indtroduce myself and Ich vorstelle mir means I imagine! Only people that speak at least four language should reply to this post.
Don't need no four languages, just commonsense. This is an Encyclopedia; it is not a place to create knowledge but to distribute it. Bet that there is a specific policy banning Original Research.
This means that your assertion may or may not be true, but to include it here you need external (and I would add scholar) sources to support it. Regards, User:Ejrrjs says What? 11:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Commonsense is not enough when it comes to langauges. If you only speak say English and Spanish how can you possible know what other languages are like. Have a look at this website http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/spanish/index.html to find out more. If you don't want to include the fact that Spanish is the most simple European language in the article it might be a good idea to say something like Spanish is the easiest language for English, French, Russian... speakers to learn.


I really doubt that Spanish is the easiest language to learn. I have been a Spanish teacher for six years, I’m a linguist, Spanish as first language, fluent in German and Catalan and I can also speak a little English and Russian, so I guess I may meet your requirement of speaking 4 languages, although just speaking a language does not entitle anybody to give an opinion, is the knowledge about it what counts. First of all, I’m not able to establish any criteria to classify the languages regarding the difficulty of its grammar. It is known among linguists, that the most important factor in language learning is the mother tongue of the student. For Germans, English is quite an easy language, and the same applies for the speakers of other Germanic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Romance languages, since English has almost lost its morphology. Each English verb (though there are about 100 that have less) has only five morphological variations –present tense (I ring), 3rd person (he rings), simple past (I rang), past participle (I have rung) and gerund (ringing). Just to make my point clear, where English has 5, Spanish has 51 endings for each verb, with 3 different verb groups, what makes a grandtable of 153 simple verb endings you have to learn. And we're only talking about regular endings and verbal suffixes!. In English there is no gender among nouns (Spanish has 2, German, 3), there is only one form of the definite article (the, Spanish 5 forms, German 16), one indefinite article (Spanish has five, German, 12), there is no adjective variation in English (Spanish has 2-8 possible endings, depending on the adjective). So, if we look at the morphological properties, English is doubtless the simplest European language, what actually does not mean that it is the easiest language.

On the syntax level, one of the hardest subjects in Spanish is the correct usage of relative pronouns,

According to my experience, Spanish is a relatively easy language for Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Romanians and for all Slavics, since all Slavic languages have the same verbal contrast in the past forms like Iberoromance languages, Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish: the difference between verbal aspect expression. On the other hand, all nuances in the expression of verbal aspect through combination of two verbs, where one has lost part of its meaning (=perifrasis ) are unique among all other European languages and the same applies to the differences between the two central verbal modes (indicativo and subjuntivo) or the difficult contrast between “ser” and “estar”.

Last, but not least, I doubt that you have learnt more than a semester of spanish grammar, otherwise, I’m sure you would not say Spanish is the simplest language in Europe. I think it is important to say that this should be an encyclopedia, and there is no place for POV, just knowledge and objective facts and even links to other pages which may state that Spanish is easy are not enough, since those pages contain no scientific proof of it. Stating that Spanish is the easiest language in Europe” is non-scientific, which contradicts the main principles, spirit and quality criteria of the Wikipedia.--Omanero 19:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC) [contact me]. Insisto, dudo que el que suscribe semejante barbaridad sea consciente de lo acientífico de su afirmación, al margen de la ignorancia que demuestra.

I have studied Spanish for about 10 years and lived in Spain for two so I think I know Spanish well enough to be able to comment. I also speak a Slavic and two Germanic languages. So far no one has been able to come up with an easier language than Spanish. English might be easier than Spanish when it comes to grammar but English spelling is hard enough to compensate for this let alone the pronunciation. Therefore, I still believe that Spanish truly is the most simple language. If you are having trouble with this fact it might be enough to write that it is the easiest romance language.

Absolutely not. You havent proved anything let alone attributed, see Wikipedia:Attribution and you have fasiled to give a single source for your assertion that nobody seems to agree with, SqueakBox 00:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Come on, SqueakBox. Your powers of Wikipedia policy obviously pale in comparison to the might of quadrilingual unsigned assertions! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE! ^_^ JuJube 00:45, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


Editors may make logical deductions based on fully attributed data that neither change the significance of the data nor require additional assumptions beyond what is in the source. It should be possible for any reader without specialist knowledge to understand the deductions. Therefore, if Spanish has more regular verbs than French it is easier in that department. If Spanish has an easier spelling system than French it is obviously easier to learn how to read and write in Spanish making it easier than French when it comes to reading and writing. If it is easier to tell whether a word is feminine or masculine in Spanish than it is in French Spanish is easier in that area. If Spanish only has two genders while German has three genders German is more complex in this department. If German has more irregular verbs that Spanish... I am only following Wikipedia policy. La lengua castellana no es sencilla pero es la lengua mas sencilla del mundo. Espero que comprendan que hay una diferencia entre decir que castellano es sencillo y decir que es la lengua mas sencilla. Please have a look at the grammar of any other language to find out what I mean.

Si no dominas la ortografía –deberías saber qué palabras llevan acento– ni sabes poner artículos –"decir que EL castellano es sencillo", te corrijo– ni sabes que el español, efectivamente, tiene una morfología verbal más complicada que el alemán o que el inglés o que el francés, por poner sólo unos cuantos ejemplos, si no sabes que el español, efectivamente, tiene diferencia de género –el inglés no– y si no puedes aportar ningún, reitero, ningún dato objetivo, no entiendo que sigas en tus trece. ¿Sabes hablar castellano? Lo dudo. :) Saludos.

First of all escriba en castellano por favor. Yo se que palabras llevan un acento pero prefiero escribirlas sin el acento porque asi puedo escribir mas rapidamente. You should realise that I'm not saying that my Spanish is perfect or that anyone can learn Spanish perfectly. What I am saying is that Spanish is the easiest to learn because it is the most simple. Have a look at the Defence Institute website. It clearly shows that a person needs less time to learn to speak Spanish than it takes to learn other languages. Why can't you understand that there is a difference. It takes a lot of time to learn Spanish. However, it takes even more time to learn other languages. Speaking or writing Spanish is hard. However, other languages are considerably harder.

Have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Battery.
This is pure original research on your part. Many would argue that for English speakers (and I assume we are sticking with en speakers) German is an easier language to hear and pronounce, Spanish is not either, I woukld argue Frebnch is much easier to pronounce. The Spanish r is a serious problem for many English speakers, much harder than the Portuguese r for instance. One of the hardest Spanish words I find to pronounce is idea. I always dipthong it as the Portuguese do to ideia. In Portuguese port becomes porto whereas in Spanish it is puerto which is clearly harder and the ue dipthong in a simple word like bueno is much harder than the Portuguese bon. Generally estar is very strange as is the irregular "haya" "vaya" etc (forgotten what its called but its an irregularity not seen in English except in "if I were you"). So I can easily prove you are wrong but that is my original research too, SqueakBox 18:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I've found a language senciller than English, I'd say it's the sencilest: the Spanish without stress marks. One thing less to learn
"Senciller"?! o_O JuJube 21:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely not! One of the things that makes Spanish easier to learn is the accents, otherwise learning how to pronounce would be a nightmare so your argument seems to bne the wrong way round, actually the stress accenmts are part of what makes Spanish and Portuguese easier to figure out how to pronounce than is the case with English or French, 21:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That's right. Also I hardly think that English people find German easier to pronounce than Spanish. If you think bueno is hard to pronounce try to pronounce bon in Portuguese which is nasalised. So far people have only been able to come up with English as a simpler language. Would it therefore be O.K. to write that Spanish is the most simple language after English? One thing I have noticed with Spanish is that speakers of the language exaggerate how hard their language is. If you have a problem with the word simple what about the word logical or regular. Have you ever had a look at the rules of Spanish. For example, to make a noun a plural add -s, -es and change z to c. Come on. Have you had a look at English where some plurals like teeth, feet and children are irregular or Italian where the word uomini is irregular or German where you have to learn what the plural of a noun is every single time when you learn a new word as there are no rules when it comes to forming the plural. I mean any one can see that Spanish is simpler in this regard.

Also if Spanish is harder than Portuguese why is it that Portuguese speakers understand Spanish more than Spanish speakers understanad Portuguese?

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_verbs
Without a decent source to back you up I'll revert any original research that Spanish or English are the easiest European languages to understand. Can you source that Portuguese speakers understand Spanish more easily than Spanish speakers understand Portuguese cos I dont believe it. I am aware that some english speakers have problems nasalising Portuguese but as I said earlier some English speakers have terrible problems with the Spanish r, especially when it rolls, SqueakBox 16:21, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

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.

Have a look at http://en.allexperts.com/e/s/sp/spanish_language.htm

Many Spanish speakers claim to be unable to understand Portuguese, while speakers of the latter seem to have little trouble understanding Spanish.

Have a look at http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/miniatures/mutual.htm

Spanish speakers report substantially greater difficulty in attempting to understand Portuguese in spoken form than vice versa.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_intelligible_languages

So now that we can all se that Spanish is more simple than portuguese we can move on to discussing why Spanish is more simple than German and Russian.

Perhaps we could actually discuss why Dutch is easier than Spanish for being more similar, as the bluemarble article implied. And, this isnt the Portuguese wikipedia and the fact that Spanish is easyish for Portuguese speakers doesnt make it easy for native English speakers, SqueakBox 23:01, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

First of all you asked me to source the above info. This info is relevant as the article compares Spanish with Portuguese. I never said that Spanish is easy for native English speakers what I said was that it is the easiest language to learn for native English speakers. There is a difference. The reason why Spanish is so easy for English speakers to learn is that the two languages share many words in common. Another reason is that Spanish has a very logical spellling system and it is easy to tell what gender a word is and forming plurals is easy and so on and so on. I don'r understand why you'd want to discuss Dutch though as it is definitely harder for English speakers to learn Dutch.

1) Per the article you recommended, Scots appears to be the easiest of all for English speakers, as Scots and English are sister languages. 2) Maybe you should have started off by emphasizing that Spanish is the easiest for native English speakers (after Scots, that is) instead of saying or implying it was the easiest for everyone on earth. Considering that the English lexicon is mostly Romance and the fact that Spanish has an overwhelmingly phonetic spelling system it should only be natural for English-speakers to find it relatively easy to learn Spanish. I have been wondering though: if Spanish is so easy for native English speakers, how come so many try to learn Spanish and fail? Perhaps you might provide an answer. (It's a sincere question, btw). SamEV 10:48, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Like other romance languages Spanish gives gender to what in English are gender neutral words. This has no logic atb all from an English viewpoint and absolutely makes nonsense of the idea that Spanish is the easiest language to learn. Romance languages are very difficult to pronounce which is why Romantic speakers have a more noticeable accent speaking English than say german or Dutch speakers, and vice-versa when we speak romantic languages, SqueakBox 16:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC) SqueakBox 16:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
English speakers often fail when learning Spanish because they fail even more when it comes to languages like Russian. I am not saying that they can't learn Russian it is just that many people do not have the money or the time to learn a language.
That's an interesting perspective... I don't agree with it, but it's an interesting perspective... SamEV 20:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Gender in Spanish is very easy to learn because you can nearly always tell the gender of a word by looking at its ending. For example, la casa and el chico or la mesa and el perro. Adjectives have the same ending in most cases so that you say la chica es buena. This does not happen in say German where the endings do not match. The only Romance languages that people have trouble pronouncing are French and Portuguese. If you look at the sound system of Spanish it is very close to many other languages like Greek and even to some extent Indonesian and even Turkish. One of the reasons why you may think that German speakers pronounce English better is the fact that English is a Germanic language.
Your claim that people only have a problem pronouncing French and Portuguese is that it is your original research idea, and yes of course English speakers pronounce German better because the language is much more similar in terms of pronunciation. El problema with your suffix endings for gender is that it isnt consistent and words like mar arent obvious either, SqueakBox 17:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey if you think that simple is not the right word we could say something like: Spanish is a very complex language when it comes to verb morphology as each verb can have dozens (I'm not sure how many exactly) of endings. However, the majority of Spanish verbs are regular making Spanish one of the most regular and at the same time expressive languages in Europe. What do you think?

[edit] Spanish is the most simple Romance language

Spanish is much more simple than French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. This should be in the article.

No, it shouldn't. That's POV and inherently unverifiable. It's just personal opinion. --Miskwito 08:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

This is not personal opinion. Have a look at what the defence institute thinks. They train linguists so I think they know what they are talking about.

"The defence institute"? Who?
Anyway, I think actual linguists would know best, though, and one of the fundamental ideas of modern linguistics is that on a basic level, no language is significantly more "difficult" or "easy" than any other. Virtually every linguist on the planet holds that belief. --Miskwito 10:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Battery.

That is true. However, this only applies to children that are learning their first language. In other words any child can learn any language. This is different to saying that Spanish is simple. The fact that a person can learn any language no matter how complex does not mean that the actual languages are all equal. Think of it this way. If you could learn any instrument and you decided to play the piano and someone else that could learn any instument chose to play two sticks you wouldn't be able to say that both instruments are equally hard could you?

I'm not sure how we could implement an objective criterion for what constitutes "simple" and what constitutes "complex." Even if we limit it to just "simple/complex" for English speakers, there's still some arbitrariness to what we choose and what we don't choose. In addition to the points put forth above about spelling and phonology as well as those about gender and verbal morphology, there's also the number of cognates and false friends and maybe even certain words that have no equivalents.
Whatever the case may be, I think that an objective and outside source should be used if we are going to try to discuss the "simplicity" of Spanish and make it clear from the onset that "simple" doesn't mean easier to learn and any greater learning ease that Spanish has to English is probably largely due to the similarities that the two languages share rather than any intrinsic qualities. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 23:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish dictionaries

I have found very few Spanish dictionaries available online. I think it would be good to create a section for Spanish dictionaries. (since Spanish is really important language and everyone needs dictionaries)

I know about these Spanish dictionaries http://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=welcome http://www.diccionarios.com/ http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?l=Spanish http://www.phrozensmoke.com/projects/pythonol/ http://www.supercable.es/~gweddyn/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arael2 (talk • contribs) 15:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC).


[edit] To Chris Sundita, regarding Statistics of Spanish Speakers in the Philippines

I have a question for Christopher Sundita? Did You E-mail Dr. Ian Mackenzie, regarding the statistic about the number of Spanish Speakers in the Philippines?? So what is his responds? You can't just removed anything with out discussing it with your fellow wikipideans. Just because your an Administrator, that doesn't mean you have the power to dictate or do what ever you like!. What is the outcome?--Cajamarca Express 1:06 6 March 2007 (UTC)

To answer your question, yes, I did receive an e-mail from Dr. Mackenzie and he said that he believes he obtained the source from the 1996 edition of an Italian book called Calendario atlante De Agostini (De Agostini's Calendar Atlas). He did not conduct the research on his own. Now, it looks like this Calendario is a kind of almanac or encyclopedia. In any case, the source should be removed until further verification of the source of the info. It is highly unlikely the the authors of this Italian almanac did their own research and most likely relied on the Philippine census - and the census says three thousand.
In any case, I have left a message on the talk page of an Italian Wikipedian named Ermanon who mentioned that he has used this book for sources concerning the Philippines. Until there's some kind of concrete verification, I will be reverting the edit.
Now, we could mention that 10% of the Philippine-population had varying levels of fluency in Spanish. There is a verifiable source for this - the Ford Report. However, this was taken during the infancy of the US occupation of the Philippines in the early 20th century and thus in no way does it represent the state of Spanish today. --Chris S. 03:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Reply: Thank you for the information. -- Cajamarca express 10:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken in Latin America???

How can you write this? You might as well write that Spanish is spoken in the universe. Portuguese is spoken by almost half of the population of South America. Some areas are French, English and Dutch speaking. Would you write that Latin America is French speaking? And what about Quechua and Guarani?

Um, Spanish is spoken in Latin America quite frequently depending on the country. -- Chris is me (user/review/talk) 10:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
We should be more specific. Um French is also spoken in Latin America! So are many other languages.

[edit] Spoken in North America??

Instead of North America it would be better to write Mexico, by a large minority in the USA... This gives people much more info than vague terms that cover an entire continent. It would be the same as if we wrote that Portuguese is spoken in the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia. See what I mean?

You should be aware that North America in this context includes Central America (go see the page). You can argue that this is inaccurate if you want, but you would have to do so on the North America talk page. SpiderMMB 19:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, Mexico has the largest population of Spanish-speakers in the world, and the United States has more Spanish-speaking population than 17 countries where the spanish is the official language, including the whole Central America or the Caribbean. Both countires, Mexico and the United States are located in North America. JC 08:25, 15 March 2007 (PST)
You would have to source your statement that more people speak Spanish in the US than in Colombia or Argentina, remembering that may Hispanics int he US speak English, SqueakBox 16:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
What do u mean?, I never wrote such thing. JC 08:52, 15 March 2007 (PST)
No but you implied it. BTW there are not more Spanish speakers in the States than in the Caribbean and CA oput together, SqueakBox 17:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
No, I didn't, read it again. I implied 17 of 21 countries where the spanish is the official language have less Spanish speakers than the United States. Just Mexico, Spain, Colombia and Argentina have more Spanish speakers than the United States. And yes, together Central America and the Caribbean have more Spanish speakers than the US, but not as separate regions, I have fixed it. JC 12:50, 15 March 2007 (PST)

What I meant to say is that we should be specific. There is a difference between saying that Greek is spoken in Greece and saying that Greek is spoken on planet Earth.

But what about when the US government is the source? https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html JC 23:05, 15 March 2007 (PST)

[edit] Move?

Shouldn't this be at Spanish (language)? I never say "I speak the Spanish language", I say "I speak Spanish [language]". Sound OK? I'm not putting up the RM templates because I don't like them and don't care to learn how to use them. -- Chris is me (user/review/talk) 10:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The current convention on articles with language names that could also be other things (like an ethnicity, style of music, or nationality) is to put "language" after it. Obviously when you say "I speak x" putting language after it is redundant but if you said "I know a bit about Spanish" it's not quite clear if you mean the Spanish language or Spanish music, etc. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is there anyway to block SqueakBox?

He constantly makes comments that are not based on any facts. Some of his comments include:

Can you source that Portuguese speakers understand Spanish more easily than Spanish speakers understand Portuguese cos I dont believe it German? (lol), not so! French and English were the main languages and now all 23 are official. german never got a look in,

When I provided a source for Portuguese he wrote

this isnt the Portuguese wikipedia

The comment about German that SqueakBox responded to was made by someone else than me. He was wrong once again.

English, French and German are the working languages of the EU's main institutions.

Have a look at http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/02/23/eu_official_urges_worker_language_skills/
Please see WP:AGF and dont make personal attacks. You have come here with a piece of original research and because I disagree with you you want me blocked! I have removed your malformed version of my signature, do not add my signature in a malformed way (ie wiothout the date stamp). I suggest you read policies generally as people dont get blocked for disagreeing with you, SqueakBox 16:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. I won't post any more comments that look like personal attacks. Thanks for not blocking me! I'm new so I still don't know how everything works.
No problem. I think our debate is pretty good natured so lets keep it that way, SqueakBox 17:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can we include more information about the effect Native American Languages have had on Spanish?

Languages like Nahuatl have had a large impact on the Spanish spoken in some parts of Mexico. Please do not erase this part of the heritage of Spanish speaking nations. Nahuatl is just one of the many Amerindian languages spoken by the forefathers of today's Latin American population. If you visit some Central American countries you can still see the monuments left behind by the Spaniards after they enslaved the Native Population. Viva Mexico!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.74.218 (talk • contribs).

That would belong in Mexican Spanish--Mariano(t/c) 13:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
mmm, the Nahuatl is one of the Spanish's most influential Native Americans languages. JC 12:23, 16 March 2007 (PST)
Hispanophone world != Mexico.--Jersey Devil 22:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
No one is saying that. JC 14:20, 16 March 2007 (PST)
Well if we are going to include the influence of Native American languages on Spanish we should also include the effect of Quechua, Aymara, Mayan languages, Nahuatl, Mapudungun (spoken by the Mapuche), etc... That's all I'm saying and from the original post it did seem self-centered on the effect on Mexican Spanish.--Jersey Devil 22:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


Good idea. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.74.218 (talk) 08:06, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Andorra and Belize

Ok, here it goes:

Andorra:
Number of Spanish speakers: 37,142 (source: Spanish language#Non-Hispanic countries
Total population of Andorra: 71,201 (source: Andorra)
Belize
Number of Spanish speakers: 206,404 (source: Spanish language#Non-Hispanic countries)
Total population of Belize: 291,500 (source: Belize)
Given these facts, I request:
Please explain your reason for insisting that only a minority of Andorrans speak Spanish.
Please explain your reason for insisting that only a minority of Belizeans speak Spanish.

SamEV 09:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Hm, I'm not sure we can trust the figures in that table, since they are not sourced (except for Canada)
I've been to Belize, and I didn't get the impression that two thirds speak Spanish. Not even one third.
Andorra's numbers look much more realistic to me, but it would be really good if we could get some sourced figures on those two. --Mariano(t/c) 12:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Here are sources on Andorra. I left out Ethnologue, which says 60% speak Spanish, b/c it seemed to a figure from 1986.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/an.html#People
Andorra#Culture
http://www.andorra.com/es/infogen/info.asp
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554662/Andorra.html#s3
http://www.oclc.org/languagesets/educational/languages/europe.htm
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3164.htm
But whether or not any of these sources says it's a majority, the article cannot contradict itself. So as long as it gives a figure that corresponds to a majority one part of the article, it has to stick with it.
I'll find the sources for Belize later. SamEV 13:45, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Internal links are not references andf the Belize numbers are completely over the top, SqueakBox 14:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
As SqueakBox says. As I understand it, Belize has a large Spanish-speaking minority. I'm not sure about Andorra, but either way, wikipedia is not a reliable source for wikipedia. The idea that we have to change correct information to incorrect in order to make it consistent with more precise, but incorrect, information elsewhere in the article is ridiculous. john k 15:54, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
And now here's Belize:
"Language: English is the official language, but Spanish is spoken by over half the population, and an English Creole is widely understood. Other languages are Garifuna, Maya or Ketchi in the south. Most Belizeans are bilingual and many trilingual." http://www.thecommonwealth.org/YearbookInternal/138256/society/
"Language(s): Officially English; however, over half the population speak Spanish and Creole is also widely spoken. There are a number of indigenous languages, such as Garifuna, Maya and Ketchi." British Foreign Office
And, now straight from the horse's mouth:
"With respect to fluency in Spanish, in 1991, 43.8% of the country's population spoke this language very well. Another 11.1% spoke it not so well, and a further 45.1% did not speak Spanish at all. Census 2000 shows that the corresponding percentages were 52.1%, 10.7% and 35.8%." http://www.cso.gov.bz/publications/MF2000.pdf Therefore, nearly 2/3 of the Belizean population is able to communicate in Spanish, most of them very well.
As I'm exceedingly fair, I'll also quote this:
"With respect to fluency in English, our official language, census 2000 reveals that 53.6% of the population of the country reported that they speak this language very well. Another 26.0% speak English not so well, whereas 19.9% do not speak it at all. The comparative figures for the previous census in 1991 are 54.3%, 22.5% and 23.2% respectively."(ibid.) Btw, I thought Wiki was about verifiability, consistency, not "accuracy". It's complicated, huh? SamEV 16:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Your personal,lattack against me here is unacceptable especially as you have failed to prove that Spanish is the language of Belize, Andorra or the US. POV pushing in this way wont help your case, SqueakBox 16:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
First of all, sir, I DO NOT accept your accusation that I've perpetrated ANY personal attack. Secondly, I have NOT set out to prove, as you claim, that Spanish is "the" language of Belize, Andorra, and the US. I have, however, set out to prove that Spanish is ONE of the important languages of those countries. SamEV 16:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You did just that. You implied I was a vandal. Please desist, SqueakBox 16:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox

please do not imply that Andorra, Belize and the US are Spanish speaking countries when your sources, obviously, fail to prove this bit of original research. To imply such a thing is to be dishonest to our customers, misinforming them that Belize etc are Spanish speaking countries when we all know they are not, SqueakBox 16:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm stating the facts. Plenty of countries are multilingual and will appear atop the infoboxes of several language articles. Just the facts, Squeak. SamEV 16:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The infobox ALREADY contains a section for listing where the language is official. SamEV 16:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

3 editors have now reverted you. Please let this one go, your info is so obviously wrong as it implies countries like Belize and the US are thesame as countries like Mexico and Guatemala re Spanish, which is wrong, SqueakBox 17:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Spanish is spoken everywhere but it is not spoken as the language of the gente

I have nothing less than the Belizean Census on my side. What do you have to counter that source? SamEV 17:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Squeakbox, I won't give up. It's not in me. I'm right and you're not. The fact that you can't seem to accept it is not my problem, as sympathetic a soul as I normally am. SamEV 17:27, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
You have also broken the 3rr rule edit warring and defying the consensus of 3 editors, and for an edit that in my opinion misrepresents the situation, SqueakBox 18:28, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
And as for your claim that you wont give up pushing that Belize, Andorra and the US are Spanish speaking countruies, and given that you have now attacked 2 editors, one after being warned not to attack, and given that 3 editors oppose you..well thios is a community project, please refresh yourself with how we work here and stop POV pushing your OR assertions, SqueakBox 18:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] It is easier for Spanish Spanish speakers to learn how to read and write than it is for Latin Americans

I've been learning Spanish for quite some time and have noticed that Spanish speakers from around Madrid pronounce words as they are written while many people from Latin America pronounce -s- and -c- (in front of -i- and -e-) as -s- so when writing words for the first time they are unsure whether to write iglesia or iglecia.

You might be right. It's called "seseo". Latinoamérica es un area seseante. SamEV 23:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like unsourced rubbish to me, SqueakBox 03:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Pretty much.--Jersey Devil 02:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
He should definitely source it. But I've noticed the same phenomenon, where people are not sure whether to use c, s, or z, because in the Americas they all have the same sound when c is followed by e or i. SamEV 02:31, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't need to source this as I am just using logic. Latin Americans pronounce -c- as an -s- before -e- and -i- so it makes sense that they should be unsure whether a word is spelt with a -c- or an -s-. English speakers that learn Spanish sometimes don't realise this becuase when they are told to spell words like cine they don't realise that a more phonetic spelling would be sine as they already know the English word cinema so the -c- looks right.

While it's true that "c" is not a distinguishable sound from "s" in Latin American Spanish, the conclusion doesn't necessarily follow. JuJube 06:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Are you saying that say a Mexican child that is just learning how to write knows that cerveza is not spelt serveza. A child from Madrid would know the difference as they pronounce the -c- in cerveza the same way -th- is pronounce in English when you say think. The conclusion is logical. I have a friend from Latin America who always spells iglesia as iglecia as he does not distinguish between -c- and -s-.
This is original research. You can theorize about it all you want, but you'd need to cite at least one statistical study that included a control group. SpiderMMB 04:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


When did Belize and Andorra become Spanish speaking? Or am I missing something?--Ferreterrera 20:47, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Use of "pija" in Spain

The example of "pija" is not accurate. Although it it correct that the additional meaning of "posh girl" is employed in Spain, it can be also understood as an informal word for penis. It is an example of polysemy and, therefore, not a good example of variations of the language. 24.125.221.190 01:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Its a classic obscenity in Central America, SqueakBox 23:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion about the variations of Spanish

I would like to open a discussion regarding the capability of native Spanish speakers of understanding each other. Although it is true that there are noticeable differences between the Spanish language used in different countries, I believe that it is relatively easy to understand, and that most of people do not have big problems in understanding the language all over the Spanish speaking world. I have shared this opinion with many people, specially in comparison with the situation of English. However, I don´t hacv any citation about it. If somebody does, or if the outcome of the discussion is positive, I propose to add this fact to the main article. 24.125.221.190 01:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried, but I didn't find anything on the 'net. Sorry.
Anecdotally, though, I think you are correct, as I myself have little or no difficulty communicating with Spanish-speakers from anywhere. SamEV 02:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think a lot of people find it hard to understand the sort of Spanish used in Chile.

I have never been in Chile, but I have met several people from there and, as a Spaniard, I have not had any problem. Maybe you´re refering to some particular variation or even dialect. 24.125.221.190 23:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the Spanish language hasa higher degree of mutual undertsndability than English where you get creole versions so eg the Spanish in the Caribbean is easierr to understand than Caribbean English, SqueakBox 23:09, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I speak a generic Latin American/U.S. Spanish, and I had no trouble talking to people when I was in Spain. I think there's something to what you say, but how did you want to compare it to English? Being from the States, I also don't have a hard time when I'm in Britain.
On a side note, when I was in Spain a documentary from Argentina had Spanish subtitles. SpiderMMB 07:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Falkland Islands

Why are the Falkland Islands shown as speaking Spanish when they actually speak English and no other language than English is spoken there? Owen19 12:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree! The Ogre 14:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Me too! The Falkland Islands are complictaed disputed articles with many Argentinians trying to promote the POV that these islands belong to them, hence the edit I would imagine, SqueakBox 15:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
SqueakBox, this has nothing to do with Argentina. The image should be fixed because (probably) no sinle person at the islands knows a word in Spanish. --Mariano(t/c) 20:10, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
You may be correct. When the Argentinians invaded the islands they tried to force people to speak Spanish and many Argentinians hugely resent that the falklanders dont speak Spanish. obviously therre is no need to emntion them, my point being it was likely a POV edit to promote the Argentinian sovereignty claim, SqueakBox 20:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fake vandalism claims

Please avoid making false claims when edit warring, SqueakBox 21:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I find your behavior very dissapointing. An experienced, adult Wikipedian edit-warring like this. Please present counters to the information I show in the article. But please refrain from misrepresenting information that is attributed and from reliable sources and presented correctly. SamEV 21:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
No, you are in the wrong here. Do not ever again make false claims of vandalism in edit summaries. Discuss content disputes here.--Jersey Devil 21:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
He's pushing his POV even though he has no sources to support him. Does that matter? SamEV 21:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I've moved the dispute on the infobox back to the bottom of the page. Instead of starting an entirely new discussion, why don't we continue the debate in that section where we left off? There were several proposed compromises to this situation but unfortunately discussion died before an agerement was reached on any of them. SpiderMMB 22:48, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute

The facts

  • Spanish is one of the languages spoken in Andorra by a very large portion of the population and probably the majority, per [4], [5], [6], [7], [8];
  • It is therefore incorrect and verifiably false to state that only a minority of these countries speaks Spanish. This information should not be presented in such a way as to imply, in contradiction of the reliable sources that provide it, that Spanish is spoken by only a minority of these countries' populations. SamEV 19:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Reverting an article 6 times against the wishes of 3 editors is not policy. By all rights you should be blocked, SqueakBox 19:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Also as I have stated before inserting information such as that Belize and Andorra and the US are Spanish speaking countries is not non-negociable policy and you have not even referenced your OR assertion. Bandying policy while edit warring is not covered even by WP:IAR let alone any other policy, SqueakBox 19:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Please provide evidence of such unsourced OR claims you impute to me. I strongly request evidence, for all to see. SamEV 20:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Belize speaks English and Andorra Catalan so neither should be included as Spanish speaking countries.--El Rojo 20:14, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

They're multilingual and so belong in the infoboxes of all the languages that command large percentages of speakers. Andorra belongs in that place in the Catalan article, in the French article, in the Spanish article, just as Belgium belongs in the infobox of the French and the Flemish article. SamEV 20:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Andorra is not in the infobox in the French language which just proves my point. You have grossly breached our 3RR policy and have been edit warring against 4 other editors, SqueakBox 20:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm only saying it ought to be. See French language and Dutch language and you will see France listed in both. SamEV 20:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I cant comment on Dutch but I can say that obsessive edit warring is pointless and wont mean you get your way. I see yiou have now asked for page protection which would not be warrannted if all 3rr violators were blocked. So you edit war and noyw want to protect the article where 4 editors disagree with your recent edits (this has never been here before) insisting thta Belize and Andorra are Spanish speaking countries, SqueakBox 21:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I have to wonder why France is listed on the Dutch language page. The CIA World Fact Book does not note a significant Dutch-speaking population in France:
"French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish; overseas departments: French, Creole patois"
The Languages of France article claims 20,000 speakers of West Flemish in France, or something like 0.03% of the population of France. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 00:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the infobox should look like this

Spanish
español, castellano 
Pronunciation: IPA: /espa'ɲol/, /kaste'ʎano/
Spoken in: 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 by part of the population of Andorra[1], Belize,[2] and the United States.
Total speakers: Native: 364 million
Total: 400–480 million 
Ranking: 2–5 (natively), 3 (total)
Language family: Indo-European
 Spanish
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: —
ISO 639-3: —
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.
ie with Belize and Andorra refenced and making it clear that like the US these are countries where spart of the population speaks Spanish. What I object to is thia
Spanish
español, castellano 
Pronunciation: IPA: /espa'ɲol/, /kaste'ʎano/
Spoken in: Andorra,[3][4] Argentina, Belize,[5] 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 by part of the population of the United States.
Total speakers: Native: 364 million
Total: 400–480 million 
Ranking: 2–5 (natively), 3 (total)
Language family: Indo-European
 Spanish
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: —
ISO 639-3: —
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

which implies that almost the whole population of Andorra and Belize are Spanish speaking, SqueakBox 23:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It's both a good compromise, and factual to boot. --Miskwito 02:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Interesting debate I missed.  :) I like Squeakbox's idea also. I'm gonna go ahead and implement it because I took a look at today's history and can see the process starting all over again. Hopefully this will serve as a good compromise. SpiderMMB 06:39, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I've emailed Asterion about this, and until I'm shown what policy says I have to give in in a situation where I'm obeying to the letter Wikipedia's sacrosanct attribution policy just b/c someone else has his personal problem with it, I won't stop putting this info where it belongs.
"Part" implies a minority. SamEV 07:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
"Part" means "not all". The policies of Wikipedia you're breaking are those requiring you to gain consensus for changes you make, and against edit warring. --Miskwito 07:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
First, that is your opinion of what "part" implies. By that logic, it should read on the English language page that English is spoken by "part" of the US population, b/c as you know, some people in the US do not speak English. It should also say that only "part" of Guatemalans, Mexicans, Equatoguineans, Peruvians, Bolivians, etc speak Spanish, b/c not all do.
Second, Are you saying that the consensus policy trumps Wikipedia:Attribution? SamEV 08:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Spider, SqueakBox 14:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) My feeling, SamEV, is that WP:Attribution basically boils down to "If you add information to Wikipedia, you have to cite it". That's not the same thing as "If you can cite information, it can be added to Wikipedia". So in this particular case, yes, I do think WP:Consensus trumps WP:Attribution, though I don't think either policy is inherently more important or useful than the other. --Miskwito 23:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

If you add information to Wikipedia, you have to cite it. Well, cited it is. That part of the box would be incomplete without these two countries, in which majorities, no less, can and do speak Spanish. By constrast, uncited is the claim that Spanish is not spoken in those countries. What reliable sources say it? Why should that claim be the one that prevails? Doesn't that make a mockery of this encyclopedia? SamEV 23:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes there is no justification for this in any policy. Looks like an rfc on Sam' behaviour is brewing as nobody agrees with him and nor is there any point reverting him as he just edit wars even while knowing that edit warring harms wikipedia and even though ferre is right that neither Belize or Andorra are Spanish speaking. Between them these 2 countries havent got a thirtieth of the population of Uruguay, the smallest Spanish speaking nation and it is very sad when editors act like this, SqueakBox 23:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Sam's behavior has been darn-near exemplary, considering your own and that of some others, IMO. I have no fear of whatever course you choose. As for your claims, a quick look at the sources, which include Belize's own official figures, should have dispelled your misconceptions days ago. Your opinions about what is or isn't spoken in a country is not a reliable source. SamEV 23:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Both SqueakBox and SamEV, please cut down on the invective; it's not going to help anything. (I will look at your sources again in a few minutes) --Miskwito 23:38, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
That's all I ask. It's clear some have been edit-warring w/o even deigning to check the references. I softened the language above and thank you and Spider for making the good-faith effort. SamEV 00:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Please remain calm. Reverting 13 trimes is not exemplary behaviour by any standard and your claim about "the behavior of his opponents" is a clear personal attack as is "Some have taken your side in a knee-jerk way just because they know yuo". Personal; attacks and edit warring are 2 of the least exemplary behaviour an editor can display. As for your claim that Belize is a Spanish speaking country you have not referenced your bizarre claim. Do you know Belize? Its an English speaking country which you can confirm here, SqueakBox 23:38, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, actually, he's citing sources to try to demonstrate that many people in Belize speak Spanish. I'm not sure what you mean by "Spanish-speaking country" (like, if Spanish is the official language, or the main language, or what?). In any case, you can't use Wikipedia as a source... --Miskwito 23:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand where both sides are coming from, but this is getting a little ridiculous and I'm hoping we can reach a compromise. Let me lay out what I see as the two major problems:

Side 1: Belize and Andorra should be represented as countries where a substantial portion (perhaps a majority?) of the population speak Spanish.

Side 2: We shouldn't give the impression that Belize and Andorra are Spanish speaking because the official languages are something else.

Squeakbox's last compromise suggest he's willing to indicate that Spanish speakers exist in these two countires, his problem is giving the impression that the language is official or predominant. I think that is the major point of conflict here. How about if we list the infoxbox as this: (List of official countries), unofficial in Andorra and Belize, and part of the population in the United States. (The reason I don't include the US with the unofficial countires is because English is unofficial as well and it will give the wrong impression). Does that work? I hope it will at least provide a good starting point for resolving this. SpiderMMB 00:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I know the US doesnt have an official language but the situation there is very similar to that in Belize and probably Andorra and I think it is essential that we let the reader (and especially our youger readers) know that Belize and Andorra are not SApanish speaking countries int he senser that Uruguay, hondyuras etc clearly are, so Spider's compromise would be great. I have no objections to Andorra and Belize in the box and recognize that like the US they ahve a significant number of Spanish speakers (as a percentage) but think where and how they are presented in the box is highly important, SqueakBox 00:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm loath to compromise on someone's misunderstanding. "Spoken in" does not have mean "Official in", b/c there's obviously a section for that. Nor does it mean "Primary language of", for if one looks at the other language articles, one finds many countries liste in several language infoboxes. So I think it scarcely requires pointing out that Squeakbox misunderstands that box. So why compromise in that case? Why accomodate him if he can't figure out the box?
Second, could you put your idea in an infobox, here on the talk page, so I can see it? SamEV 00:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Infobox on the right. SpiderMMB 01:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
How about this infobox, with this note below it? SamEV 01:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

1Spoken by most, but is not the primary or official language

Spanish
español, castellano 
Pronunciation: IPA: /espa'ɲol/, /kaste'ʎano/
Spoken in: Andorra1, Argentina, Belize1, 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 by part of the population of the United States.
Total speakers: Native: 364 million
Total: 400–480 million 
Ranking: 2–5 (natively), 3 (total)
Language family: Indo-European
 Italic
  Romance
   Italo-Western
    Gallo-Iberian
     Ibero-Romance
      West Iberian
       Spanish 
Writing system: Latin (Spanish variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 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, and Venezuela.
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 
Map of the Hispanophone world,
with major to minor Spanish-speaking countries or regions.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

I have moved this section back to the bottom

[SqueakBox is] pushing his POV even though he has no sources to support him. Does that matter? SamEV 21:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I dont understand your point. The US and Belize and Andorra are not like the other countries, ie they are not Spanish speaking countries. I am baffled as to why you think they are. And you clearly havent sourced this either, nor can you source soemthing that is demonstrably not true. And actually I reverted your vandalism accusation edit. It was another user, the one who you claimed was a vandal, who began this edit war again and you jumped in making these accusations so I think it is wrong to say I was pushing my POV, SqueakBox 01:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it's fair to say that Andorra and Belize aren't Spanish-speaking countries, simply because it depends on what you choose to define that as. If you just mean "countries where the official language is Spanish", then you're right, or if you mean "countries where the overwhelming majority of the population speaks Spanish", you're right as well. But I think certainly there's some evidence Sam has provided (especially for Belize) that there are quite sizeable percenteges of Spanish-speakers there. The dispute here, I think, is more over whether the difference in overall percentage of Spanish speakers, and the lack of official status for Spanish in those countries, makes them fundamentally different from the others in the infobox. The consensus on the talk page seems to me to be that Andorra and Belize merit inclusion in the infobox, but along with mention of the US at the bottom, rather than included in the list of countries with overwhelming Spanish-speaking majorities where Spanish has official status and strong cultural significance. --Miskwito 01:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes but I am not disputing that the coutries should be in the box, they are countries with lots of Spanish in them. My point is merely that they should be in the bottom. I notice Sam has now begun to include the US as just another Spanish speaking country in spite of months of work getting the consensus that that was not acceptable. You go to get a business permit or go to court etc in Belize and Andorra and the US and with Spanish you'll need a translator whereas in the other countries if you dont have Spanish is when you'll need the translator, SqueakBox 01:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I agree then. I still think Spider's proposed compromise works the best: 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 by part of the population of Andorra[6], Belize,[7] and the United States.
I agree with Spider's suggestion too, SqueakBox 01:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Again, I object to it saying that "part" of the Andorra and Belize populations are Spanish-speaking. The implication is that it's a minority. It's the very reason SqueakBox wants the US to be in the "part" section. The sources say majorities in Andorra and Belize speak the Spanish language and this article should not state or suggest differently. SamEV 02:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
It's apparent that you don't care much for consensus. It's not even the content of the edits that is the problem but rather your way of going about all this by edit warring, false claims of vandalism, etc... During your edit war on this article you also broke the three revert rule. You've already been blocked once for breaking the 3rr on this article.--Jersey Devil 02:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that's fair. I'm just saying that presentation matters. I ask you to address the points I raised, please. SamEV 02:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Sam, I looked at your citations. The 2000 Belize census does show a majority of the population speaks Spanish, but it is still second to English:

English Spanish
SPOKEN WELL 53.6% 52.7%
NOT SO WELL 26% 10.7%
NOT AT ALL 19.9% 35.8%

[9] <--I only read the intro on page 7, so let me know if there's something I missed.

None of the Andorra citations you provided give a side by side estimate. The closest is Encarta, which says that "more than half" the population speaks Spanish and 30% speak Catalan "as their native tongue." Frankly, I'm skeptical of the accuracy of this only becuase Encarta and Ethnologue have widely varying estimates on number of language speakers. But if we accept this as true, it still leaves the possibility that "more than half" the population speak Catalan as a second language and it still has a higher percentage of speakers. [10]

What everyone seems to be objecting to is leaving the impression that these countries are primarily Spanish speaking. I've never been to Belize or Andorra, so I can't say. But since there is no clear evidence that either one is, I think the objections are warranted. So I have to ask what you would suggest as a compromise, because after checking your cites I think the objections are justified. No one is saying Andorra and Belize shouldn't be in the infobox, but there has to be a way to do it that compromises with the people who don't want to leave the impression that they are primarily Spanish speaking. SpiderMMB 06:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at the sources, Spider.
Impressions? Well you see, I object to how SqueakBox wants to give the impression that it is minorities that speak Spanish in these countries when, as you have yourself verified, it is majorities. He wants to misrepresent the very data the article is relying on.
Worse still, his concern is unwarranted, because the threshold for inclusion in the box is whether at least a notable minority speaks the given language. It's not about being the most spoken, nor the primary, nor official language in that section. You can see that in these infoboxes:
Russian
Русский язык Russkiy yazyk
Spoken in: Bulgaria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia and former Soviet states, Slovakia, Uruguay and USA.
Total speakers: primary language: about 147 million
secondary language: 113 million (1999 WA, 2000 WCD) 
Ranking: 8 (native)
Language family: Indo-European
 Balto-Slavic
  Slavic
   East Slavic
    Russian 
Writing system: Cyrillic alphabet 
Official status
Official language of: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Gagauzia.
Regulated by: none
Language codes
ISO 639-1: ru
ISO 639-2: rus
ISO 639-3: rus 
Countries of the world where Russian is spoken.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.
Japanese
Nihongo 
Nihongo (Japanese) in Japanese script:
日本語 (Japanese language)
Spoken in: Japan, Brazil, Peru, United States (esp. Hawaii), Taiwan, Korea, Guam, Marshall Islands.
Total speakers: 130 million [11] 
Ranking: 9
Language family: Japonic
 Japanese 
Writing system: Japanese logographs and syllabaries 
Official status
Official language of: Angaur (Palau) (Questionable. See the discusion below.)
De facto in Japan
Regulated by: None
Japanese government plays major role
Language codes
ISO 639-1: ja
ISO 639-2: jpn
ISO 639-3: jpn
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.
Is Japanese the most spoken, primary or official language of Brazil, Peru, or the US? Is Russian the same in India, Poland, China, etc? Those are not isolated examples. It's the standard at Wikipedia. With majorities speaking Spanish, Andorra and Belize more than meet the standards for inclusion. SamEV 21:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Sam, being aggressive towards me wont help anybody or anything. I believe you have falsely already accused me of committinmg murder so you need to take great care in what you say here as I dont have indefinite patience towards people who wrobngly (and knowingly) accuse me of committing serious crimes. And you have not given any justification for your belief that Belize and Andorra are Spanish speaking countries either. Your references dont state that and thus nor shoudl wikipedia. We are an encyclopedia with a reputation for gwetting it wrong, so lets not deliberately do so here, SqueakBox 22:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Nice try at a diversion. I think your comments constitute a personal attack. Maybe Wikipedia will continue to get it wrong so long as you have your way. I, Miskwito and Spider have read the Belize government's own Census figures, and here again is the link for all to read [12]. You can avoid the facts all you want. You might want to offer proof of this supposed murder accusation you speak of. SamEV 22:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Er what personal attack. I suppose you can attack me as much as you like ie here but I cant even point out your personal attacks, lol. If you think Belize is a Spanish speaking country you are wrong, the census figures show they have a high level of immigratiopn and nothing else, SqueakBox 22:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Good lord... Talk about grasping at straws. SamEV 22:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

What straws? What are you talking about? Try visiting Belize one day without any English and see how useful Spanish is, SqueakBox 23:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not a credible source and neither are you, so neither of our anecdotal experiences or "impressions" count. Even if I were able to report that I spoke overwhelmingly with Spanish-speakers in Belize, I'm not a source. That is why credible sources are required and content decisions are supposed to be based on them. SamEV 00:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
If you wish to claim Belize is a Spanish speaking country please do so at Belize and not here, SqueakBox 00:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't claim it, Belize claims it [13]. And please remember that you do not own this article. SamEV 01:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I never claimed I owned the article, or if I did please provide the diff. Indeed you are in a minority of one with your POV, have you not seen that? Once you get thenm to agree with you at Belize about it being Spanish we can make the appropriate changes here but if you are claiming that the Belize government is saying it is Spanish speaking I dont see much point in further discussion, SqueakBox 01:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually not only does your pdgf document not state that Spanish is the language of Belize but it states that it is a minority language, just what I was saying on the infobox. Now I am confussed. If you believe Belize is a Spanish you need to source it. That's why we make people source things, to avoid ridiculous errors, but I remain confident you cannot source that Belize is a Spanish speaking country just like Guatemala, honduras, etc, SqueakBox 01:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I am indeed showing that the Belize government says that more than half of the Belize population speaks Spanish. In fact, it's the Belizean people themselves, in their own responses to their census. Yes sir. That is the extent of what I'm saying here. You can spin it however you want. SamEV 01:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

No. Your article says over 50% speak English and over 40% speak Spanish, SqueakBox 01:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You are mistaken. Just the people who say they speak Spanish very well is 52.1%. You must be looking at the 1991 census figures, which are given in the document as a comparison. Check it again. SamEV 01:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think it's ridiculous that the U.S. is listed as a country where Japanese is spoken. I'm sure the percentage is insignificant, but that's besides the point. Sam, how would you suggest we list the infobox, keeping in mind people understand your point but also that people besides SqueakBox have voiced concern about this? SpiderMMB 05:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Like this box, with a footnote: "1Spoken by most, but is not the primary or official language".
Spanish
español, castellano 
Pronunciation: IPA: /espa'ɲol/, /kaste'ʎano/
Spoken in: Andorra1, Argentina, Belize1, 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 by part of the population of the United States.

1Not the primary or official language of this country
Total speakers: Native: 364 million
Total: 400–480 million 
Ranking: 2–5 (natively), 3 (total)
Language family: Indo-European
 Italic
  Romance
   Italo-Western
    Gallo-Iberian
     Ibero-Romance
      West Iberian
       Spanish 
Writing system: Latin (Spanish variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 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, and Venezuela.
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 
Map of the Hispanophone world,
with major to minor Spanish-speaking countries or regions.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

SamEV 06:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Sam, take a look at the box on the right. That was the best way I could implement your footnote into the box. Since this is where the conversation died last time, and since no one else has responded to you, I have to ask for input from others on this. Does this work for people? Secondly, if we agree on Sam's suggestion how should we treat the United States? Should we omit "part of the population" and just use the footnote, or keep "part of the population" w/ the foonote, or keep "part of the population" w/o the foonote? SpiderMMB 02:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

That's good. I made a minor change to make it as non-invasive as possible. But are you sure the language infobox has no footnote parameter, like the country infobox? SamEV 04:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I tried several different ways to get the "footnote" section from the country infobox into the language box, and none of them worked. SpiderMMB 05:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I tried it too. SamEV 05:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

OK Sam, I went ahead and changed the infoxbox since it's been a few days and no one has responded. I suspect if anyone objects they'll revert it and address it here. SpiderMMB 17:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Indeed there is zero consensus for putting that Belize and Andorra are Spanish speaking countries, neither is Curacao, SqueakBox 17:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
SqueakBox, your concern was addressed: a disclaimer - completely unnecessary, mind you, as I already showed - was included to accomodate you. And still you object and reverted Spider. It's becoming more and more difficult to divine your position. SamEV 07:26, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Spider, whereto from here? SamEV 07:36, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Sam, it would be helpful if you would explain exactly what your objection to the current version is. I am not suggesting removing Andoarra and Belize, merely putting them at the end with the US. I am baffled as to your objection to my version which so clearly fits the facts and is much more reader friendly as to those facts than your version. If you can explain exactly what you object to in my version it would be helpful. Given that Belize and Andorra are similar in position to the US and totally different from Honduras etc I dont understand your objection to the current version, SqueakBox 14:56, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
Squeakbox, I honestly don't know where I fall on this - I'm mostly trying to mediate and have the infobox be an accurate portrayal - but I think Sam's position is clear. The cites that he provided show that a significant percentage of the population speaks Spanish in Belize, much more than in the United States. I understand your argument against that - Belize has a small population and therefore high percentage is not as relevant; or that from your travels Belize is not Spanish speaking in the sense of other Latin countries. Having never been to Belize I can't say, but I do think Sam's cites are pretty convincing (on Andorra I'm less convinced).
I'm hoping other people will chime in on this, because essentially it's a dispute between you two and obviously you are both adamant about your positions. SpiderMMB 01:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
To SqueakBox: I'd be glad to. You want the infobox to say in effect that a minority of the populations of these two countries speak Spanish, which is false. Your version contradicts the correct information already in the body of the article, which is sourced, and here are direct quotes from the sources: "With respect to fluency in Spanish, in 1991, 43.8% of the country's population spoke this language very well. Another 11.1% spoke it not so well, and a further 45.1% did not speak Spanish at all. Census 2000 shows that the corresponding percentages were 52.1%, 10.7% and 35.8%." (I have bolded the relevant info) This information is from the document Population Census 2000, from Central Statistical Office Ministry of Budget Management of Belize.[14] Now with respect to Andorra, Encarta says the following: "Andorra’s official language is Catalan, which is spoken by about 30 percent of the population as a first language. Spanish is spoken by more than half the population, and a small percentage of residents speak French as a mother tongue. Few Andorrans speak English." Besides denying this information from reliable sources, you're stuck on some non-existent requirement that a language must be the principal language of all the countries listed. Take a look around Wikipedia and you'll find out you're mistaken. I already gave examples of other language articles to that effect. Why do you insist on misrepresentation the facts about these countries? How does that benefit Wikipedia? Why can't you to this day back up your stance with sources, SqueakBox?SamEV 01:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A piece of advice

Edit wars are disruptive by their own nature and give wikipedia a bad name. There are other ways to sort out this kind of disputes. I do realise there are strong feelings about this issue but reverting will not help anyone to push their case, it would just get editors to block to avoid more disruption to this article. Please reconsider your actions. Regards, --Asteriontalk 22:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map of Hispanophone World

I think the map of the hispanophone world should be changed. I don't know when it happened, but the previous map only highlighted certain states within the U.S. I think Spanish in the U.S. is important and should be documented, but this map is highly misleading. Spanish is not spoken extensively in every American state, but this map leaves that impression. Judging from this map, it would seem that Spanish is more important in Montana and North Dakota than it is in Brazil or certain European countries, which I seriously doubt is the case. In my opinion the map should be colored, at most, different shades of green to reflect the top 10 Spanish speaking states in the U.S. To highlight the entire United States, however, is very inaccurate.

I think this map might be a good starting place: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-Hispanophone_World%28temporary%29.png. In the meantime I think there should be suggestions as to how to alter the map (I went to wikicommons and have no idea how) or whether the map should be deleted until it can be portrayed more accurately.SpiderMMB 02:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

The way that it is currently, the map makes a three-way distinction and colors American states differently. I don't think that the way it is indicates that Spanish is spoken extensively in every state. It could have changed since you put your comment, but I think the map is currently fine in that it doesn't give that impression of the United States. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 04:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
We're talking about the same map. The problem, I think, is that all the American states are colored some shade of green. In states where next to no Spanish is spoken, the color should be grey like other non-Spanish speaking places. Having a light shade of green for all of those American states while places like Europe and Brazil are grey creates the impression that Spanish is spoken more in those American states than in those other countries, which isn't the case. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SpiderMMB (talk • contribs) 09:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC).
Oh, I see. Well, that's certainly an idea. What do other people think? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Well Spanish isnt spoken in Brazil or Europe outside Spain and Andorra either so they should all be grey including all US states without a significant and sourceablke Spanish speaking population, SqueakBox 19:59, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting that Brazil or Europe are Spanish-speaking. What I meant is that certain places in Brazil and countries in Europe probably have higher concentrations of Spanish speakers than some of the U.S. states shaded the lightest green. This creates the wrong impression that those light-green American states have higher concentrations of Spanish-speakers. I agree with you that they should all be grey except the U.S. states with significant and sourecable Spanish-speaking populations, such as New Mexico, Texas, and California. This page should provide a good starting point.SpiderMMB 21:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've reverted the map to its earlier version. There was dissastisfaction expressed with it here as well as here and on this talk page. No one seems to be able to edit it, so I've reverted it back for the time being to a less controversial version. Hopefully someone can improve upon it.SpiderMMB 19:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

You realize that the map you reverted to has the same problem that you addressed just above, right? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
It's not as pronounced. The only notable Spanish-language emphasis is placed on Southwestern U.S. states and Florida.SpiderMMB 00:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Reply: I removed the new map you have provided, due to it's giving out misleading information. We already have a map with fact details and informations, why change the truth. --Cajamarca express 12:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
If you bothered to read this talk page you would know why. There's an entire discussion above. The map inaccurately gives the portrayal that Spanish is spoken more widely in certain U.S. States than in other parts of the world, which is not true. In states where it is hardly spoken at all (like Maryland) it should be grey and not light green. This map gives the impression more people speak Spanish in the Dakotas than in the two counrties that borden Spain, France and Portugal, which I doubt is the case.
I'll repeat it again, I have nothing against the U.S. being represented on this map, especially as it has the fifth-largest Spanish speaking population in the world. But the map as it stands is grossly misleading. I'll provide links, again, to two talk pages, here as well as here that echo these sentiments. If the EARLIER (note, NOT new) map I've provided inaccurately lists Western Sahara, then fine, it is inaccurate. But the current map needs to be changed also. People have also voiced concern that the shaded parts of western Brazil, which mostly contains Amazon territory, should not be shaded either.
Can we intelligently discuss this or is it going to turn into a childish revert war like the Phillippines?SpiderMMB 01:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
...So you reverted to a map that has the same problem but is wrong in other ways? That sounds like you're going backwards. I suggest we keep the newer map until someone can edit it. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 18:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Still waiting for the Map of Hispanophobe World.


Why are the United States all coloured in Green? I thought Spanish was mostly spoken around New York, Chicago and in the southern states. What if you coloured the states where a large majority of the people study Spanish as a second language a different colour? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 211.28.74.218 (talk • contribs).

It depends on the granularity you seek. Why not counties instead of states? Why not cities? Anyhow, it something to propose.--Mariano(t/c) 13:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that the U.S. should be represented on the map but accurately -- the current map creates a big misrepresentation. I think SqueakBox and I agreed it should only be places with a high number or percentage of Spanish speakers. Based upon this page I would suggest lightly shading Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. NY, FL, and IL have high numbers but I'm guessing they're around metropolitan areas, so maybe a green dot in NYC, Chicago, and Miami would do. The problem is changing the actually map, it's not as easy as editing an entry and unfortunately I haven't had time to look into it. I contacted Christopher Sundita, who is an administrator and has edited the map in the past, but never got a reply. SpiderMMB 03:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I think the map is small enough that coloring only individual cities or counties is a bit extreme. States is fine. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 17:40, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at the maps for Italophone world and Francophone world to see what I mean by dots (actually more like squares). These maps are the same size and template as the hispanophone world, and they show up just fine. The thing is, I think the most important thing for the map is accuracy. SpiderMMB 01:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
All right, but I still think that, especially in the southwest, marking individual American cities only would not be demonstrative of how widespread Spanish is in those areas. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 03:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I agree about the Southwest. If you look back I actually said I think the entire states of TX, NM, AZ, and CA should be shaded (lightly, in order to indicate it is still not the majority language there). SpiderMMB 03:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Then we are in agreement. Onward! Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:41, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


Why is the entire US coloured light green? I thought that Spanish was mostly spoken in the South. This map is obviously bias.

Fully agree, SqueakBox 14:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Also agree, and moving this to the bottom and including it with the rest of the discussion. SpiderMMB 01:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I've also moved this discussion to the talk page at Wikimedia Commons so that mapmakers can be aware of it. SpiderMMB 01:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/p/a/Talk%7ESpanish_language_757e.html"