Spanish language

Spanish, Castilian
Español, Castellano
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol], [kasteˈʎano]
Spoken in
Total speakers	First language 329[1] million to 400[2][3][4] million. As first or second language 450[5] million to 500[6] .
Ranking	2 (native speakers),[7] 3 (total speakers)[8]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West Iberian Spanish, Castilian
Writing system	Latin (Spanish variant)
Official status
Official language in	20 countries, United Nations, European Union, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, Union of South American Nations, Central American Integration System, Caricom, World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, Andean Community of Nations, Mercosur, Inter-American Development Bank, Latin Union, Antarctic Treaty.
Regulated by	Association of Spanish Language Academies (Real Academia Española and 21 other national Spanish language academies)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa
ISO 639-3	spa
Linguasphere
Countries where Spanish has official status.      States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population.      States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population.      States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Spanish or Castilian (español or castellano in Spanish) is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects and languages in the northern fringes of the Iberian Peninsula during the 10th century and gradually spread through the Kingdom of Castile, becoming the foremost language for government and trade^[9] in the Spanish Empire.

Latin, the basis of all Romance languages including Spanish, was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War around 210 BC. During the 5th century, Hispania was invaded by Germanic Vandals, Suevi and Visigoths, and other eastern peoples (Alans), but they left few linguistic influences other than a few dozen loanwords. After the Moorish Conquest in the 8th century, Arabic became a significant influence in the evolution of Iberian languages including Castilian (see Influences on the Spanish language).

Modern Spanish developed with the Readjustment of the Consonants (Reajuste de las sibilantes) that began in 15th century. The language continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of other languages, as well as developing new words. Spanish was taken most notably to the Americas as well as to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In 1999, there were 402 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 417 million people^[10] worldwide. Currently these figures up to 400^[2][3][4] and 450^[11][12] million people respectively. It is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese.^[7] Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

History

A page of Cantar de Mio Cid, in mediaeval Castilian.

Spanish evolved from Vulgar Latin introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by Romans during the Second Punic War around 210 BC, with influence from Arabic during the Andalusian period^[13] and other surviving influences from Basque and Celtiberian, as well as Germanic languages via the Visigoths.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Castilian is thought to have evolved in the northern fringes of the Iberian Peninsula during the 10th century along the remote crossroad strips among the Alava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain (see Glosas Emilianenses), as a strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin, Leonese, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions (see Iberian Romance languages).

Modern Spanish developed in Castile with the Readjustment of the Consonants (Reajuste de las sibilantes) during the 15th century. Typical features of Spanish diachronic phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalisation (Latin annum, Spanish año, and Latin anellum, Spanish anillo) and diphthongisation (stem-changing) of stressed short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.

This northern dialect from Cantabria was carried south during the Reconquista.

The first Spanish grammar (Gramática de la lengua castellana) — and, incidentally, the first grammar of any modern European language — was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492, by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When he presented it to Queen Isabella, according to anecdote, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire.^[14] In his introduction to the grammar, dated August 18, 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."^[15]

From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Americas and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonisation. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's influence on the Spanish language from the 17th century has been so great that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes (the language of Cervantes).^[16]

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.

Geographic distribution

Spanish is recognised as one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organisation of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Latin Union, and the Caricom and has legal status in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Hispanosphere

Active learning of Spanish.^[79]

It is estimated that the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million, making it the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Chinese, and English). Spanish is the second most-widely spoken language in terms of native speakers.^[80][81] Global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese. ^[82]

Europe

Spanish spoken in the European Union

In Europe, Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. It is widely spoken in Gibraltar, though English is the official language.^[83] It is the most spoken language in Andorra, though Catalan is the official language.^[84][85]

Spanish is spoken in 20 different countries worldwide. It is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.^[86] Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, Spanish is the native language of 1.7% of the population, representing the largest minority after the 4 official languages of the country.^[87]

Spain

In Spain and in some parts of the Spanish speaking world, but not all, Spanish is called castellano (Castilian) as well as español (Spanish), that is, the language of the Castile region, contrasting it with other three languages spoken in Spain such as Galician (proto-Portuguese), Basque, and Catalan. In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, as opposed to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. the rest of the Spanish languages). Article III reads as follows:

El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. (…) Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas…

Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (…) The rest of the Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities…

However, to some in other linguistic regions, this term considered demeaning to them, or alienating, and will therefore use the term español exclusively. The Spanish Royal Academy uses the term español (rather than "castellano") in its publications, due to the fact that "the term derives from the Provenzal word espaignol, which in turn derives from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, which means 'from -- or pertaining to -- Hispania'"^[88]. The Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (a linguistic guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms (español and castellano) are regarded as synonymous and equally valid^[89].

Currently, the name castellano, which refers directly to the sociopolitical context in which it was introduced in the Americas, is preferred particularly in the Spanish regions where other languages are spoken (Catalonia, Basque Country, Valencian Community, Balearic Islands and Galicia) as well as in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, instead of español, which is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole in the rest of Latin America and Spain. There is a degree of controversy in some regions of Spain revolving around the use of the terms español or castellano when referring to the Spanish language, which is linked to a greater political controversy about Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalisms. The origins of the castellano language is really not in the "Castilla" but in "Cantabria", with other languages running south during the "Reconquista", as Gallego-Portuguese, Astur, Astur-Leones, Aragones and Catalán).

Americas

Latin America

Most Spanish speakers are in Latin America; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. Mexico has the most native speakers of any country. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico , Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní^[90]), Peru (co-official with Quechua and, in some regions, Aymara), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language (co-official with English) in Puerto Rico.^[91]

Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population.^[92][93] Mainly, it is spoken by the descendants of Hispanics who have been in the region since the 17th century; however, English is the official language.^[94]

Spain colonized Trinidad and Tobago first in 1498, introducing the Spanish language to the Carib people. Also the Cocoa Panyols, laborers from Venezuela, took their culture and language with them; they are accredited with the music of "Parang" ("Parranda") on the island. Because of Trinidad's location on the South American coast, the country is greatly influenced by its Spanish-speaking neighbors. A recent census shows that more than 1 500 inhabitants speak Spanish.^[95] In 2004, the government launched the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005.^[96] Government regulations require Spanish to be taught, beginning in primary school, while thirty percent of public employees are to be linguistically competent within five years.^[95]

Spanish is important in Brazil because of its proximity to and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbors, and because of its membership in the Mercosur trading bloc and the Union of South American Nations.^[97] In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making Spanish language teaching mandatory in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil.^[98] In many border towns and villages (especially in the Uruguayan-Brazilian and Paraguayan-Brazilian border areas), a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.^[99]

United States

Spanish spoken in the United States. Blue indicates 50% of people speak Spanish, and grey indicates 0% speak Spanish.

According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Latino by origin;^[100] 34 million people, 12.2 percent, of the population more than five years old speak Spanish at home.^[101] Spanish has a long history in the United States because many south-western states were part of Mexico, and Florida was also part of Spain, and it recently has been revitalized by Hispanic immigrants. Spanish is the most widely taught language in the country after English. Although the United States has no formally designated "official languages," Spanish is formally recognized at the state level in various states besides English; in the U.S. state of New Mexico for instance, 40% of the population speaks the language. It also has strong influence in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York City, and Chicago and in the last decade, the language has rapidly expanded in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Richmond, Washington, DC, and Missouri. Spanish is the dominant spoken language in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. With a total of 33,701,181 Spanish (Castilian) speakers, according to US Census Bureau,^[102] the U.S. has the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking population.^[103] Spanish ranks second, behind English, as the language spoken most widely at home.^[104]

Africa

In Africa, Spanish is official in Equatorial Guinea (co-official with French and Portuguese), as well as an official language of the African Union. In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers.^[105][106] Today, in Western Sahara, an unknown number of Sahrawis are able to read and write in Spanish, and several thousands have received university education in foreign countries as part of aid packages (mainly in Cuba and Spain). It is also spoken in the Spanish cities in continental North Africa (Ceuta and Melilla) and in the autonomous community of Canary Islands (143,000 and 1,995,833 people, respectively). Within Northern Morocco, a former Franco-Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish as a second language.^[107] It is spoken by some communities of Angola, because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War, and in Nigeria by the descendants of Afro-Cuban ex-slaves.

Asia

Spanish was used by the colonial governments, at different times, in United States territories such as, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands and in the country of the Philippines. During Spanish control, it was an official language of the Philippines, although it was never spoken by the majority of the people ^[108]. It continued as an official language until the change of Constitution in 1973. During most of the colonial period it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken mainly by Spaniards and Latin American groups as a first language and less significantly as a second language by other populations. However, by the mid 19th century a free public school system in Spanish was established throughout the islands, which increased the numbers of Spanish speakers. Following the U.S. occupation and administration of the islands, the strong Spanish influence amongst the Philippine population proved to be a major foe against the imposition of English by the American government, especially after the 1920s. The US authorities' conducted a campaign of solidifying English as the medium of instruction in schools, universities, and public spaces and prohibited the use of Spanish in media and educational institutions which gradually reduced the importance of the language generation after generation. After the country became independent in 1946, Spanish remained an official language along with English and Tagalog-based Filipino. However, the language lost its official status in 1973 during the Ferdinand Marcos administration. The Arroyo government reintroduced Spanish into the education system in 2010. Radio Manila also broadcasts daily in Spanish. Worthy of mention is the Chabacano language spoken by 600,000 people both in the Philippines and Sabah. Chabacano, a Spanish pidgin, initially sounds strange to Spanish speakers but is mutually intelligible.

The local languages of the Philippines retain much Spanish influence, with many words coming from or being derived from Castilian Spanish and Mexican Spanish, due to the control of the islands by Madrid through Mexico City.^[109]

Oceania

Among the countries and territories in Oceania, Spanish is also spoken in Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. The U.S. Territories of Guam and Northern Marianas, and the independent states of Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia all once had majority Spanish speakers, since the Marianas and the Caroline Islands were Spanish colonial possessions until the late 19th century (see Spanish-American War), but Spanish is no longer used by the masses but there are still native and second-language speakers. It also exists as an influence on the local native languages and is spoken by Hispanic American resident populations.

Accent variation

An examination of the dominance and stress of the voseo dialect in Central America. Data generated as illustrated by the Association of Spanish Language Academies. The darker the country, the stronger its dominance.

Cervantes Institute Headquarters in Madrid, Spain

There are important variations spoken among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. One major phonological difference between Castilian, broadly speaking, the accents spoken in most of Spain, and the accent of some parts of southern Spain and all the Latin American accents of Spanish, is the absence of a voiceless dental fricative (/θ/ as in English thing) in the latter.^[110] In Spain, the Castilian accent is commonly regarded as the standard variety used on radio and television,^{[111][112][113][114]} although attitudes towards southern accents have changed significantly in the last 50 years. In addition to variations in pronunciation, minor lexical and grammatical differences exist. For example, loísmo is the use of slightly different pronouns and differs from the standard.

The variety with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by more than the twenty percent of the Spanish speakers (107 million of the total 494 million, according to the table above). One of its main features is the reduction or loss of the unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.^[115][116]

Voseo

Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: tú, usted, and vos. The use of the pronoun vos and/or its verb forms is called voseo.

Grammar

Vos is the subject form (vos decís) [you say] and object of a preposition (a vos digo) [to you I say], while "os" is the direct object form (os vi) [I saw you (all)] and indirect object without express preposition (os digo) [I say to you (all)].^[117]

Since vose is historically the 2nd-person plural, verbs are conjugated as such despite the fact the word now refers to a single person:

«Han luchado, añadió dirigiéndose a Tarradellas, [...] por mantenerse fieles a las instituciones que vos representáis» (GaCandau Madrid-Barça [Esp. 1996]).

The possessive form is vuestro: Admiro vuestra valentía, señora. Adjectives, when used in conjunction with vos, do not agree with the pronoun but instead with the real referents in gender and number: Vos, don Pedro, sois caritativo; Vos, bellas damas, sois ingeniosas.^[117]

Two main types of voseo may be distinguished: reverential and American dialectal. In archaic solemn usage, voseo expressed special reverence and could be used to address both the second person singular and the second person plural. In contrast, the more commonly known American form of voseo is always used to address only one speaker and implies closeness and familiarity.^[117] Unlike the first type, the second one need not involve vos and may instead be expressed simply in the use of the plural form of the verb (even in combination with the pronoun tú).

The pronominal voseo employs the use of vos as a pronoun to replace tú and de ti, which are second-person singular informal.
^[117]

• As a subject vos employs: «Puede que vos tengás razón» (Herrera Casa [Ven. 1985]) instead of «Puede que tú tengas razón»
• As a vocative: «¿Por qué vos la tenés contra Álvaro Arzú ?» (Prensa [Guat.] 3.4.97) instead of «¿Por qué tú la tienes contra Álvaro Arzú?»
• As a term of preposition: «Cada vez que sale con vos, se enferma» (Penerini Aventura [Arg. 1999]) instead of «Cada vez que sale contigo, se enferma»
• And as a term of comparison: «Es por lo menos tan actor como vos» (Cuzzani Cortés [Arg. 1988]) instead of «Es por lo menos tan actor como tú»
  ^[117]

However, for the pronombre átono (that which uses the pronominal verbs and its complements without preposition) and for the possessive, they employ the forms of tuteo (te, tu, and tuyo), respectively: «Vos te acostaste con el tuerto» (Gené Ulf [Arg. 1988]); «Lugar que odio [...] como te odio a vos» (Rossi María [C. Rica 1985]); «No cerrés tus ojos» (Flores Siguamonta [Guat. 1993]). In other words, in the previous examples the authors conjugate the pronoun subject vos with the pronominal verbs and its complements of tú.^[117]

The verbal voseo consists of the use of the second person plural, more or less modified, for the conjugated forms of the second person singular: vos vivís, vos comés. The verbal paradigm of voseante is characterized by its complexity. On the one hand, it affects, to a distinct extent, each verbal tense. On the other hand, it varies in functions of geographic and social factors and not all the forms are accepted in cultured norms.^[117]

Extension in Latin America

The voseo pronoun is used in Central America's Nicaragua more frequently than in neighboring countries.

Vos is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of tuteo in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, the majority of Peru and Venezuela, Coastal Ecuador and the Atlantic coast of Colombia.

They alternate tuteo as a cultured form and voseo as a popular or rural form in: Bolivia, north and south of Peru, Andean Ecuador, small zones of the Venezuelan Andes, a great part of Colombia, and the oriental border of Cuba.

Tuteo exists as an intermediate formality of treatment and voseo as a familiar treatment in: Chile, the Venezuelan Zulia State, the Pacific coast of Colombia, and the Mexican state of Chiapas.

Areas of generalized voseo include Argentina, Costa Rica, East of Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian region of Valle and Antioquia.^[117]

Ustedes

Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. "Usted" (Ud.) was initially the written abbreviation of "vuestra merced" (your grace). The Spanish accents of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural for daily use, ustedes (formal or familiar, as the case may be, though vosotros non-formal usage can sometimes appear in poetry and rhetorical or literary style). In Spain there are two forms — ustedes (formal) and vosotros (familiar). The pronoun vosotros is the plural form of tú in most of Spain, but in the Americas (and in certain southern Spanish cities such as Cádiz and in the Canary Islands) it is replaced with ustedes. It is notable that the use of ustedes for the informal plural "you" in southern Spain does not follow the usual rule for pronoun–verb agreement; e.g., while the formal form for "you go", ustedes van, uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Cádiz or Seville the informal form is constructed as ustedes vais, using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronoun–verb agreement is preserved in most cases. The 'ustedeo' is mainly used in Costa Rica and Colombia

Vocabulary

Some words can be different, even significantly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, 'butter', 'avocado', 'apricot') correspond to manteca, palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except manteca), Paraguay, Peru (except manteca and damasco), and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words coger ('to take'), pisar ('to step on') and concha ('seashell') are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of coger and pisar is also "to have sex" and concha means "vulva". The Puerto Rican word for "bobby pin" (pinche) is an obscenity in Mexico, but in Nicaragua it simply means "stingy", and in Spain refers to a chef's helper. Other examples include taco, which means "swearword" (among other meanings) in Spain and "traffic jam" in Chile, but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish. Pija in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is an obscene slang word for "penis", while in Spain the word also signifies "posh girl" or "snobby". Coche, which means "car" in Spain, central Mexico and Argentina, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means "baby-stroller", while carro means "car" in some Latin American countries and "cart" in others, as well as in Spain. Papaya is the slang term for "vagina" in the western part of Cuba, where the fruit is called fruta bomba instead.^[118][119]

Royal Spanish Academy

The Royal Spanish Academy Headquarters in Madrid, Spain

The Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Because of influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.

Classification and related languages

Spanish is closely related to the other West Iberian Romance languages: Asturian, Galician, Ladino, Leonese and Portuguese. Catalan, an East Iberian language which exhibits many Gallo-Romance traits, is more similar to Occitan to the east than to Spanish or Portuguese.

Spanish and Portuguese have similar grammars and vocabularies as well as a common history of Arabic influence while a great part of the peninsula was under Islamic rule (both languages expanded over Islamic territories). Their lexical similarity has been estimated as 89%.^[120] See Differences between Spanish and Portuguese for further information.

Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino),^[121] which is essentially medieval Spanish and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century.^[121] Therefore, its relationship to Spanish is comparable with that of the Yiddish language to German. Ladino speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans: current speakers mostly live in Israel and Turkey, and the United States, with a few pockets in Latin America.^[121] It lacks the Native American vocabulary which was influential during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Castilian, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.

Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly olim (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.

A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.

Vocabulary comparison

Spanish and Italian share a similar phonological system. At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%.^[120] The lexical similarity with Portuguese is greater at 89%. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or Romanian is lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71%^[120]): comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is low at an estimated 45% – the same as English. The common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.

1. also nós outros in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads)
2. noi altri in Southern Italian dialects and languages
3. Alternatively nous autres
4. Depending on the written norm used. See Reintegracionismo
5. Medieval Catalan, e.g. Llibre dels feits del rei en Jacme

Characterisation

A defining feature of Spanish was the diphthongization of the Latin short vowels e and o into ie and ue, respectively, when they were stressed. Similar sound changes are found in other Romance languages, but in Spanish, they were significant. Some examples:

• Lat. petram > Sp. piedra, It. pietra, Fr. pierre, Rom. piatrǎ, Port./Gal. pedra, Ar. piedra, Ast. piedra, Cat. pedra "stone".
• Lat. moritur > Sp. muere, It. muore, Fr. meurt / muert, Rom. moare, Port./Gal. morre, Ar. muere, Ast. muerre, Cat. mor "die".

Peculiar to early Spanish (as in the Gascon dialect of Occitan, and possibly due to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f- into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. Compare for instance:

• Lat. filium > It. figlio, Port. filho, Ar. fillo, Gal. fillo, Ast. fíu, Fr. fils, Cat. fill, Occitan filh (but Gascon hilh) Sp. hijo (but Ladino fijo);
• Lat. fabulari > Lad. favlar, Port./Gal. falar, Ar. fablar, Ast. falar, Sp. hablar;
• but Lat. focum > It. fuoco, Port./Gal. fogo, Ar. fuego, Ast. fueu Cat. foc, Sp./Lad. fuego.

Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, for example:

• Lat. clamare, acc. flammam, plenum > Lad. lyamar, flama, pleno; Sp. llamar, llama, lleno. However, in Spanish there are also the forms clamar, flama, pleno; Port. chamar, chama, cheio; Gal. chamar, chama, cheo; Ast. llamar, llama, llenu.
• Lat. acc. octo, noctem, multum > Lad. ocho, noche, muncho; Sp. ocho, noche, mucho; Port. oito, noite, muito; Gal. oito, noite, moito; Ast. ocho, nueche, munchu.

By the 16th century, the consonant system of Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from neighbouring Romance languages such as Portuguese and Catalan:

• Initial /f/, when it had evolved into a vacillating /h/, was lost in most words (although this etymological h- is preserved in spelling and in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words).
• The consonant written ‹u› or ‹v› (in Latin, this was [w], at the time of the merger it may have been a bilabial fricative /β/) merged with the consonant written ‹b› (a voiced bilabial plosive, /b/). In contemporary Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic ‹b› and ‹v›, excepting emphatic pronunciations that cannot be considered standard or natural.
• The voiced alveolar fricative /z/ which existed as a separate phoneme in medieval Spanish merged with its voiceless counterpart /s/. The phoneme which resulted from this merger is currently spelled s.
• The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ merged with its voiceless counterpart /ʃ/, which evolved into the modern velar sound /x/ by the 17th century, now written with j, or g before e, i. Nevertheless, in most parts of Argentina and in Uruguay, y and ll have both evolved to /ʒ/ or /ʃ/.
• The voiced alveolar affricate /d͡z/ merged with its voiceless counterpart /t͡s/, which then developed into the interdental /θ/, now written z, or c before e, i. But in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and the Americas this sound merged with /s/ as well. See Ceceo, for further information.

The consonant system of Mediaeval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino and in Portuguese, neither of which underwent these shifts

Writing system

Spanish language
Don Quixote, master work in Spanish literature.
Overview
Pronunciation · History · Orthography · Varieties Names given to the Spanish language
Grammar
Determiners · Nouns · Pronouns Adjectives · Prepositions Verbs (conjugation • irregular verbs)

Spanish is written in the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the character ‹ñ› (eñe, representing the phoneme /ɲ/, a letter distinct from ‹n›, although typographically composed of an ‹n› with a tilde) and the digraphs ‹ch› (che, representing the phoneme /t͡ʃ/) and ‹ll› (elle, representing the phoneme /ʎ/). However, the digraph ‹rr› (erre fuerte, 'strong r", erre doble, 'double r', or simply erre), which also represents a distinct phoneme /r/, is not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994 ‹ch› and ‹ll› have been treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remain a part of the alphabet. Words with ‹ch› are now alphabetically sorted between those with ‹ce› and ‹ci› , instead of following ‹cz› as they used to. The situation is similar for ‹ll›.^[122][123]

Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 27 letters and 2 digraphs:

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.^[124]

ch,^[125] ll^[126].

The letters "k" and "w" are used only in words and names coming from foreign languages (kilo, folklore, whiskey, William, etc.).

With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as México (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. Under the orthographic conventions, a typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including ‹y›) or with a vowel followed by ‹n› or ‹s›; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.

The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare el ('the', masculine singular definite article) with él ('he' or 'it'), or te ('you', object pronoun), de (preposition 'of'), and se (reflexive pronoun) with té ('tea'), dé ('give' [formal imperative/third-person present subjunctive]) and sé ('I know' or imperative 'be').

The interrogative pronouns (qué, cuál, dónde, quién, etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (ése, éste, aquél, etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. The conjunction o ('or') is written with an accent between numerals so as not to be confused with a zero: e.g., 10 ó 20 should be read as diez o veinte rather than diez mil veinte ('10,020'). Accent marks are frequently omitted in capital letters (a widespread practice in the days of typewriters and the early days of computers when only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the Real Academia Española advises against this.

When ‹u› is written between ‹g› and a front vowel (‹e i›), it indicates a "hard g" pronunciation. A diaeresis (‹ü›) indicates that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., cigüeña, 'stork', is pronounced [θiˈɣweɲa]; if it were written ‹cigueña›, it would be pronounced [θiˈɣeɲa].

Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question and exclamation marks (‹¿› and ‹¡›, respectively).

Phonology

The phonemic inventory listed in the following table includes phonemes that are preserved only in some accents, other accents having merged them (such as yeísmo); these are marked with an asterisk (*). Sounds in parentheses are allophones. Where symbols appear in pairs, the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant.

Lexical stress

Spanish is a syllable-timed language, so each syllable has the same duration regardless of stress.^[128][129] Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth last or earlier syllables. The tendencies of stress assignment are as follows:^[130]

• In words ending in vowels and /s/, stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.
• In words ending in all other consonants, the stress more often falls on the last syllable.
• Preantepenultimate stress (stress on the syllable that comes three before the last in a word) occurs rarely and only in words like guardándoselos ('saving them for him/her/them') where clitics follow certain verbal forms.

In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress such as sábana ('sheet') and sabana ('savannah'), as well as límite ('boundary'), limite ('[that] he/she limits') and limité ('I limited'), or also "líquido", "liquido" and "liquidó".

An amusing example of the significance of intonation in Spanish is the phrase ¿Cómo "¿cómo como?"? ¡Como como como! (What do you mean, how do I eat? I eat the way I eat!).

Grammar

Spanish is a relatively inflected language, with a two-gender system and about fifty conjugated forms per verb, but limited inflection of nouns, adjectives, and determiners. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)

It is right-branching, uses prepositions, and usually, though not always, places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages. Its syntax is generally Subject Verb Object, though variations are common. It is a pro-drop language (or null subject language) (that is, it allows the deletion of pronouns which are pragmatically unnecessary) and is verb-framed.

See also

• Names given to the Spanish language
• Spanish language poets
• Spanish profanity
• Spanish proverbs

References

Bibliography

• Abercrombie, David (1967). Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 
• Cressey, William Whitney (1978). Spanish Phonology and Morphology: A Generative View. Georgetown University Press. ISBN 0878400451 
• Eddington, David (2000). "Spanish Stress Assignment within the Analogical Modeling of Language". Language (Language, Vol. 76, No. 1) 76 (1): 92–109. doi:10.2307/417394. http://linguistics.byu.edu/faculty/eddingtond/STRESS.pdf 
• Harris, James (1967). "Sound Change in Spanish and the Theory of Markedness". Language (Language, Vol. 45, No. 3) 45 (3): 538–552. doi:10.2307/411438. http://jstor.org/stable/411438 
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003). "Castilian Spanish". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259. doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373 

External links

Spanish language edition of Wikisource, the free-content library

• (Spanish) Dictionary of the RAE Real Academia Española's official Spanish language dictionary
• Spanish – BBC Languages
• Spanish evolution from Latin
• Different Spanish Accents Demonstrated Short educational videos.
• Spanish phrasebook on WikiTravel

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