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Spanish Language

Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world after Chinese and English. A great part of the Spanish speakers are found in Latin America, who together with those living in Spain, United States, Philippines and even Africa make up the 417 million Spanish speakers who are found world wide. This data includes first as well as second language speakers.

History

The development of the Spanish language started 3000 yers ago from Latin roots, which gives to Spanish the state of romance language. The Latin influence is evident in vocabulary, which includes also Germanic lemmas (in the 5th century BC the Visigots invaded Spain) and words of Arabic origin (from 700 BC and for the subsequent 700 years Spain was conquered by the Muslims).

When in 1713 it was set up the "Real Academia", the process of standardization of the language began. The Academia was born with the aim of defining what "pure" Spanish was and regulating the process of incorporation of neologism and foreign words. The Academia has always had a conservative attitude, rejecting international words or new lemmas. The result has been the creation of the "perfect" Spanish, a static form which with time has became more and more different from everyday language. It was only with the end of Franco's dictatorship that the evolution of the language reached a turning-point: after more than thirty years of censure, it followed a process of revitalization of culture in general and of language in particular. Spoken Spanish became more colorful and it incorporated neologism derived from techincal and scientific advances. What is more, anglicism, which up to now had been forbidden, started to enter the language. The process of evolution of Spanish is still going on, making the language one in continuos evolution.

Dialects

When we talk about Spanish dialects, we are not considering Catalan, Basque and Galician, which, together with Castillano (or standard Spanish) are the three officially recognised languages of Spain. So, these are proper languages and not dialects.

The language spoken in the region of Castilla became the national standard in 1200, with a law issued by King Alfonso X. Thanks to this law, now it existed a universal form of Spanish, which was used in politics, education and administration. With time, the national standard has evoluted in many variations not only in Spain but also in America and the phenomenon affected mainly spoken language. The intonation in America is quite different from the Spanish one and also some words are different: consider the 2nd person pronoun, that in Spain is "tu" while in Argentina is "vos".

Literature

Spanish authors have contributed a great deal to the European literary scene.

The Renaissance was the Golden Age in literature, as it counted with masterpieces as Cervantes' "Don Quijote" and great playwrights as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina or Calderon de la Barca. Benito Perez Galdos introduced the realistic novel in the 19th century and in the same period Machado and Garcia Lorca published their best poems. Miguel Unaumo was the leader of the "Generation of 98", a group of writers which made an effort to bring new life to the cultural life of Spain. The Civil War caused many writers to be exiliated, and this resulted in a stasis in literary production. As soon as writers could went back to Spain, new names as Camilo Jose Cela emerged. Miguel Delibes, one of the most read writers nowadays, moved the first steps in the literary scene after World War II. Finally, the post-Franco period was dominated by the novel of experimentation, which had in Mendoza and Juan Benet two of its most important protagonists.

Grammar and Slang

The strict rules of the Accademia didn't prevent Spanish from developing a quite extended Slang Language.

The romance origins of Spanish make it a langauge full of inflections as for adjectives, verbs and nouns. Verbs decline according to numerous tenses and include three modes, indicative, subjuntive and conditional. Spanish prepositions are not a simple list to be learned by heart. Any learner has certainly been driven crazy by "por" and "para": the first preposition indicates cause or reason, while "para" indicates purpose or destination. The difference is not so evident, and identifying all the possible cases would be a gorgeous task, this is why even those who no more are learners still make mistakes in the use if the two.

Spanish is a so-lively language that to appreciate it 100% it's compulsory a trip there to have direct contact with culture and people. You will notice the great use of diminitives with nouns and adjectives, which are used not only to indicate size, but also as a nice way of inicating affection or to make a word less harsh. Have a look at the following examples:
niño --- niñito ("small boy"---"little tiny boy")
planta --- plantita ("plant"---"little plant")
vaso --- vasito ("glass"---"little glass")

Apart from diminutives, youngsters use a rich and colorful slang language, for instance:
- Menudo pájaro es ese: I wouldn't trust him futher than I can throw him.
- Más vale tarde que nunca: Better late than never.
- Dicho y hecho: No sooner said than done.
- ¡Anda a bañarte! (Chile) Go away!
- ¡Pierde cuidado!: Don't worry!
- Es broma: Just kidding.

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Resources related to Languages

• Spanish Language Schools in Spain
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