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Spanish (español) is a Romance language originally from the northern area of Spain. It is the official language of Spain, most Latin American countries and Equatorial Guinea. In total, twenty nations and several territories use Spanish as their primary language.

Spanish originated as a Latin dialect along the remote cross road strips among the Cantabria, Burgos and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain. From there, its use gradually spread inside the Kingdom of Castile, where it evolved and eventually became the principal language of the government and trade. It was later brought to the Americas and other parts of the world in the last five centuries by Spanish explorers and colonists.

The language was spoken by roughly 364 million people worldwide in the year 2000, making Spanish the most popular Romance language and the second most spoken language by number of native speakers. It is estimated that the combined total of native and non-native Spanish speakers is 400–480 million, probably making it the third most spoken language by total number of speakers.

Spanish is also one of six official working languages of the United Nations and one of the most used global languages. It is spoken most extensively in the Americas, Spain and to a small extent in Africa and Asia Pacific. It is also the second most widely spoken language in the United States and arguably the most popular foreign language for study in US schools and Universities. Within the globalized market, there is currently an international expansion and recognition of the Spanish language in literature, the film industry, television (notably telenovelas) and music.

Naming

Spanish people tend to call this language Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) when contrasting it with languages of foreign states, such as French and English, but call it Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), i.e. Castilian, the language of the Castile region, when contrasting it with other languages of Spain (such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan). In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) to define the official language of the whole State, opposed to Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (lit. the other Spanish languages). Article III reads as follows:

Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)

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

In some parts of Spain, mainly where people speak Galician, Basque and Catalan, the choice of words reveals the speakers' sense of belonging and their political views. People from bilingual areas might consider it offensive to call the language Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), as that is the term that was chosen by Francisco Franco—during whose dictatorship the use of regional languages was discouraged—and because it implies that Basque, Catalan and Galician are not languages of Spain. On the other hand, more nationalist speakers (both Spanish and regional nationalists) might prefer Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) either to reflect their belief in the unity of the Spanish State or to denote the perceived detachment between their region and the rest of the State. However, most people in Spain, regardless of place of origin, do not distinguish between the two terms in ordinary speech.

Some philologists use "Castilian" only when speaking of the language spoken in Castile during the Middle Ages, stating that it is preferable to use "Spanish" for its modern form. The subdialect of Spanish spoken in most parts of modern day Castile can also be called "Castilian". This dialect differs from those of other regions of Spain (Andalusia for example); the Castilian dialect is almost exactly the same as standard Spanish.

Some Spanish speakers consider castellano a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English.

Classification and related languages

Spanish/Castilian has closest affinity to the other West Iberian Romance languages. Most are mutually intelligible among speakers without too much difficulty. It has different common features with Catalan, an East-Iberian language which exhibits many Gallo-Romance traits. Catalan is more similar to Occitan than Spanish and Portuguese are to each other.

• Galician ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))
• Portuguese ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))
• Catalan ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))
• Asturian ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))
• Aragonese ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))
• Occitan ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))
• Ladino ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help))

Vocabulary comparison

Characterization

Spanish and Italian share a very similar phonological system and do not differ very much in grammar, vocabulary and above all morphology. Speakers of both languages can communicate relatively well: at present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%. As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. Spanish is mutually intelligible with French and with Romanian to a lesser degree (lexical similarity is respectively 75% and 71%). The writing systems of the four languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.

One defining characteristic of Spanish was the diphthongization of the Latin short vowels e and o into ie and ue, respectively, when they were stressed. Although similar sound changes can be found in other Romance languages, they were particularly significant in this one. Some examples:

• Lat. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > Sp. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), It. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Fr. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Port./Gal. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) "stone".
• Lat. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > Sp. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), It. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Fr. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) / Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Rom. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Port./Gal. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) "he dies".

More 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 which did not diphthongate. Compare for instance:

• Lat. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > It. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Port. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Fr. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Occitan Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Gascon Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) Sp. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) and Ladino Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help);
• late Lat. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > Lad. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Port. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Sp. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help);
• but Lat. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > It. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Port. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Sp./Lad. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help).

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

• Lat. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), acc. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > Lad. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help); Sp. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help); Port. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help).
• Lat. acc. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) > Lad. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help); Sp. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help); Port. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help).

Ladino

Ladino, which is essentially medieval Castilian and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. In many ways it is not a separate language but a dialect of Castilian. Ladino lacks native American vocabulary which was influential during colonial times. It does contain other vocabulary from Turkish, Hebrew and from other languages spoken wherever the Sephardic Jews settled.

Portuguese

The two major Romance languages originated in the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish and Portuguese, have generally a moderate degree of mutual intelligibility in their standard spoken forms. Spanish and Portuguese share similar grammars and a majority of vocabulary 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 is estimated at 89%.

History

The Spanish language developed from Vulgar Latin, with influence from Celtiberian, Basque and Arabic, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Spanish Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), palatalization (Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Spanish Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Spanish Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help); Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Spanish Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.

During the Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), this northern dialect from Cantabria was carried south, and indeed is still a minority language in the northern coastal regions of Morocco.

The first Latin to Spanish grammar ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When Isabella of Castile was presented with the book, she asked, What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?, to which he replied, Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire.

From the 16th century onwards, the language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau, and the Philippines by Spanish colonization. Also in this epoch, Spanish became the main language of Politics and Art across the major part of Europe. In the 18th century, French took its place.

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara and parts of the United States, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City, that had not been part of the Spanish Empire.

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

Geographic distribution

Spanish language
A manuscript of the Cantar de mio Cid, 13th century
Overview
Pronunciation stress Orthography Names
History
Old Middle Influences
Grammar
Determiners Nouns gender Pronouns personal object Adjectives Prepositions Verbs conjugation irregular verbs
Dialects
Andalusian Andean Argentine Belizean Bolivian Canarian Caribbean Central American Chilean Colombian Costa Rican Cuban Dominican Ecuadorian Equatoguinean Guatemalan Honduran Mexican Murcian New Mexican Nicaraguan Paraguay Panamanian Peninsular Peruvian Philippine status Puerto Rican Rioplatense Saharan Salvadoran Standard Uruguayan Venezuelan
Dialectology
Seseo Yeísmo Voseo Leísmo Loísmo
Interlanguages
Llanito Jopara Judaeo-Spanish Portuñol Spanglish Castrapo Creoles Roquetas Pidgin Chavacano or Chabacano Palenquero or Palenque
Teaching
Hispanism RAE Instituto Cervantes
v t e

Spanish is one of the official languages of the Organization of American States, the United Nations, the South American Community of Nations, and the European Union.

With approximately 106 million first-language and second-language speakers, Mexico boasts the largest population of Spanish-speakers in the world. The three next largest Spanish-speaking populations reside in Colombia, Spain and Argentina.

Spanish is the official language in 21 countries: Argentina, Bolivia (co-official Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea (co-official French), Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama , Paraguay (co-official Guaraní), Peru (co-official Quechua and Aymara), Puerto Rico (co-official English), Spain (co-official in some regions with Catalan, Galician and Basque), Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The vast majority of its speakers are located in Spain and the Western Hemisphere.

The non-Spanish speaking Americas

Spanish holds no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize. However, it is the native tongue of about 40% of the population, and is spoken as a second language by another 15%.Belize Population and Housing Census 2000</ref> It is mainly spoken by Hispanic descendants who have remained in the region since the 17th century. However, English remains the sole official language.

Spanish has become increasingly important in Brazil due to proximity and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbors (for example, as a member of the Mercosur trading bloc). In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, that makes Spanish available as a foreign language in the country's secondary schools. In many border towns and villages (especially along the Uruguayan-Brazilian border) a mixed language commonly known as Portunhol is also spoken.

In the United States, 42.7 Million people are Hispanics according to the 2005 census. Some 32 million people (12% of the whole population) aged 5 years or older speak Spanish at home. While this may be due to immigration, Spanish is also the most widely taught foreign language. In total, the U.S. contains the world's fifth-largest Spanish speaking population.

Europe

Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In European countries other than Spain, it is spoken in communities in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and an important language of business communication for those countries as well. It is also spoken widely in Gibraltar, although English is used for official purposes. Likewise, it is spoken in Andorra though Catalan is the official language. Spanish also shares a strong lexical similarity with its sister Romance languages of Italian and Portuguese, and may be mutually intelligible on a small scale with those languages within Italy and Portugal.

Asia

Although Spanish was an official language in the Philippines for over three centuries, it was never spoken by the majority of the population. Its importance fell in the first half of the 20th century following the US occupation and administration of the islands. The introduction of the English language in the Filipino government system put an end to use of Spanish as the official language. The language lost its status in 1987, during the Corazon Aquino administration. According to the 1990 census, there were 2,658 native speakers of Spanish. The number of Spanish speakers, however, are not available in the ensuing 1995 and 2000 censuses. Additionally, according to the 2000 census, there are over 600,000 native speakers of Chavacano, a Spanish based creole spoken in Cavite and Zamboanga. Many Philippine languages have numerous Spanish loanwords. See Also: Spanish language in the Philippines.

Spanish is also spoken by about 50,000 Japanese Peruvian expatriates living in Japan.

Africa

In Africa, Spanish is spoken in Canary Islands, an autonomous community of Spain. It is also spoken in the Spanish territories of Peñón de Alhucemas, Isla perejil , Ceuta, the Chafarinas Islands, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, some of which are contested with Morocco. It is co-official with French in Equatorial Guinea, a small country of 500,000 people, where it is the prevalent language.. In Morocco, a former Spanish colony that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish.

Oceania

Among the countries and territories in Oceania, Spanish is also spoken by 3,000 inhabitants of Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. According to the 2001 census, there are approximately 95,000 speakers of Spanish in Australia, 44,000 of which live in Greater Sydney.

The island nations of Guam, Palau, Northern Marianas, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia all once had Spanish speakers, but Spanish has long since been forgotten. It now only exists as an influence on the local native languages.

Antarctica

In Antarctica, the territorial claims and permanent bases made by Argentina and Chile also place Spanish as the official and working language of these exclaves.

Total numbers of Spanish speakers

Hispanic countries

• The following is a list of the numbers of estimated Spanish speakers in different regions of the Hispanic world.

	Country/Territory	Speakers
1	Mexico	106,255,000
2	Colombia	46,500,000
3	Spain	44,000,000
4	Argentina	41,248,000
5	Venezuela	26,021,000
6	Peru	23,191,000
7	Chile	15,795,000
8	Cuba	11,285,000
9	Ecuador	10,946,000
10	Dominican Republic	8,850,000
11	Guatemala	8,163,000
12	Honduras	7,267,000
13	Bolivia	7,010,000
14	El Salvador	6,859,000
15	Nicaragua	5,503,000
16	Paraguay	4,737,000
17	Costa Rica	4,220,000
18	Puerto Rico	4,017,000
19	Uruguay	3,442,000
20	Panama	3,108,000
21	Philippines	3,180,000 (a) / 3,000 (b)
22	Equatorial Guinea	447,000

(a) Estimated statistics provided on behalf of the "Instituto Cervantes de Manila", "Education Council and Embassy of Spain in Manila" (Consejería de Educación de la Embajada de España en Manila) in 2006 and the "Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language " (Academia Filipina de Lengua Española) in 2006.

(b) Current estimate by Wikipedian editors.

Non-Hispanic countries

• The following is a list of the total numbers of estimated Spanish speakers in different regions of the non-Hispanic countries.

	Country	Speakers
1	United States of America	32,200,000
2	Canada	245,000
3	Belize	206,404
4	Andorra	37,142
5	Western Sahara	37,132 (d)
6	Morocco	20,000

(c) Only includes people of 5 years of age and older. Also, people who use the language at work or other settings but not at home are not included

(d) Although part of the Spanish Empire, Arabic language and Arabic culture remains the dominant cultural production in Western Sahara. Spanish is only spoken by Hispanic expatriates and peoples of Spanish ancestry.

Variations

There are important variations among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. In Spain the Castilian dialect pronunciation is commonly taken as the national standard (although the characteristic weak pronouns usage or Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)]] of this dialect is deprecated). One has to be aware that for most people, nearly for everyone in Spain, "standard Spanish" means "pronouncing everything exactly as it is written", which of course doesn't correspond to any real dialect. In practice, the standard way of speaking Spanish in the media is "written Spanish" for formal speech, "Madrilenian dialect" (basically a southern dialect) for informal speech.

Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns: Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), and in some parts of Latin America, Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (the use of this form is called voseo). Generally speaking, Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) and Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) are informal and used with friends (though in Spain Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) is considered an archaic form for address of exalted personages, its use now mainly confined to the liturgy). Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) is universally regarded as the formal form (derived from Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), "your mercy") , and is used as a mark of respect, as when addressing one's elders or strangers. The pronoun Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) is the plural form of Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in most of Spain, although in the Americas (and certain southern Spanish cities such as Cádiz, and in the Canary Islands) it is replaced with Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help). It is remarkable that the use of Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) 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", Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Cádiz the informal form is constructed as Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronoun-verb agreement is preserved in most cases.

Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (see Voseo) is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun in many countries of Latin America, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, the Antioquia and Valle del Cauca states of Colombia and the State of Zulia in Venezuela. In Argentina, Uruguay, and increasingly in Paraguay, it is also the standard form used in the media, but media in other Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) countries generally continue to use Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) or Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) except in advertisements, for instance. Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) may also be used regionally in other countries. Depending on country or region, usage may be considered standard or (by better educated speakers) to be unrefined. Interpersonal situations in which the use of vos is acceptable may also differ considerably between regions.

Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. The Spanish dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural, Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (formal or familiar, as the case may be). In Spain there are two forms — Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (formal) and Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (familiar).

The Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), like academies formed for twenty-one other national languages, exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Due to this 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.

Some words can be different, even embarrassingly 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 recognise specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, "butter", "avocado", "apricot") correspond to manteca, palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words coger (to catch, get, or pick up), 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 "vagina". The Puerto Rican word for "bobby pin" (pinche) is an obscenity in Mexico, and in Nicaragua simply means stingy. Other examples include taco, which means "swearword" in Spain but is known to the rest of the world as the Mexican foodstuff. Pija in many countries of Latin America is an obscene slang word for penis, while in Spain the word signifies "posh girl" or "snobby". Coche, which means car in Spain, means pig in Guatemala while carro means "car" in some Latin American countries and "cart" in others as well as in Spain.

Writing system

Spanish is written using the Latin alphabet, with the addition of the character "ñ" (eñe), an "n" with tilde. Historically, the digraphs "ch" ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), "ll" ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), and "rr" ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), double "r") were regarded as single letters, with their own names and places in the alphabet (a, b, c, ch, d…, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o… r, rr, s…), because each represents a single phoneme (/tʃ/, /ʎ/, and /r/, respectively). Since 1994, these letters are to be replaced with the appropriate letter pair in collation. Spelling remains visually unchanged, but words with "ch" are now alphabetically sorted between those with "ce" and "ci", instead of following "cz", and similarly for "ll" and "rr". However, the names che, elle and erre doble are still used colloquially.

Excluding a very small number of regional terms such as México, pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling (see Mexico: Origin and history of the name). 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", and 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 additionally used to distinguish certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("the" before a masculine singular noun) with Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("he" or "it"), or Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("tea"), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("give") and Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("I know", or imperative "be") with Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("you", object pronoun), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (preposition "of" or "from"), and Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (reflexive pronoun). Interrogative pronouns ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), etc.) receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives ( Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), etc.) are accented when used as pronouns. The conjunction Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("or") is written with an accent between numerals so as not to be confused with a zero: e.g., Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) should be read as Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) rather than Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("10, 020"). In practice, those errors usually go unnoticed (or are ignored altogether) except for the distinction between si (if), and sí (yes). Accent marks are frequently omitted in capital letters (aggravated in the early days of computers where only lowercase vowels were available with accents), but that is wrong according to RAE rules.

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

Sounds

The phonemic inventory listed in the following table includes historical phonemes that have merged with others in the process of the language's evolution (in most dialects), marked with an asterisk (*). Sounds in parentheses are allophones or dialectal variants.

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

• The initial /f/, that had evolved into a vacillating /h/, was lost in most words (although this etymological h- has been preserved in spelling and in some Andalusian dialects is still aspirated).
• The bilabial approximant /β̞/ (which was written u or v) merged with the bilabial oclusive /b/ (written b). Orthographically, b and v do not correspond to different phonemes in contemporary Spanish, excepting some areas in Spain, particularly the ones influenced by Catalan.
• The voiced alveolar fricative /z/ (written as s between vowels) merged with voiceless /s/ (written s, or ss between vowels).
• The voiced alveolar affricate /dz/ (written z) merged with voiceless /ts/ (written ç, or c before e, i), and then /ts/ 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. (Notice that the ç or c with cedilla was in its origin a Spanish letter, although it is no longer used.)
• The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (written j, or g before e, i) merged with voiceless /ʃ/ (written x, as in Quixote), and then /ʃ/ 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 consonant system of Medieval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino and in Portuguese, neither of which underwent these shifts.

Lexical stress

Spanish has a phonemic stress system — stress is not fixed, and different stress patterns can result in separate meanings for one and the same word. Spanish makes abundant use of this feature, especially in distinguishing verb conjugation forms. For example, the word Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (with penultimate stress) means "road" or "I walk" whereas Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (with final stress) means "you (formal)/he/she/it walked". Another example is the word Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (first-syllable stress) "practical", which is different from Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (second-syllable stress) "I practice," and Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (last-syllable stress) "you (formal)/he/she/it practiced." Also, since Spanish syllables are all pronounced at a more or less constant tempo, the language is said to be syllable-timed.

As mentioned above, stress can always be predicted from the written form of a word. An amusing example of the significance of stress and intonation in Spanish is the riddle como como como como como como, to be punctuated and accented so that it makes sense. The answer is ¿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 small noun declension and limited pronominal declension. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)

Spanish syntax is generally Subject Verb Object, though variations are common. Spanish is right-branching, uses prepositions, and usually places adjectives after nouns.

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

See also

• Romance languages
• Real Academia Española
• Common phrases in Spanish
• Hispanophone
• List of English words of Spanish origin
• Names given to the Spanish language
• Spanish proverbs
• Spanish language poets
• Spanish-based creole languages
• Spanish profanity
• Portuguese Language
• Portuñol
• Papiamento, Chavacano language, Palenquero
• Llanito
• Rock en español (Spanish language rock and roll)
• Latin Union
• Isleños
• Spanish Empire
• Frespañol
• Spanglish

Local varieties

References

1. "Fuentes y criterios demográficos". Centro virtual Cervantes.
2. Languages Spoken By More Than 10 Million People, MSN Encarta, Summer Institute of Linguistics (see the ranking).
3. Ethnologue, 2005 Edition.
4. "Presentación del IV Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española". RAE.
5. ¿Por qué español? (Spanish). Universpain.
6. CIA The World Factbook United States
7. Template:PDFlink, Statistical Abstract of the United States: page 47: Table 47: Languages Spoken at Home by Language: 2003
8. Template:PDFlink, MLA Fall 2002.
9. ^ "Spanish". ethnologue.
10. ^ http://www.cso.gov.bz/publications/MF2000.pdf
11. CIA World Factbook — Belize
12. MERCOSUL, Portal Oficial (Portuguese)
13. BrazilMag.com, August 08 2005.
14. Lipski, John M. (2006). "Too close for comfort? the genesis of "portuñol/portunhol"" (PDF). Selected Proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. ed. Timothy L. Face and Carol A. Klee, 1–22. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
15. ^ U.S. Census Bureau. Percent of People 5 Years and Over Who Speak Spanish at Home: 2005
16. Template:PDFlink, MLA Fall 2002.
17. Facts, Figures, and Statistics About Spanish, American Demographics, 1998.
18. BBC Education — Languages, Languages Across Europe — Spanish.
19. Elucidate — Business Communication Across Borders: A Study of Language Use and Practice in European Companies Edited by Professor S Hagen © InterAct International, 1997]
20. CIA World Factbook — Gibraltar
21. ^ http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761554662/Andorra.html#s3
22. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3164.htm
23. Ethnologue Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
24. "Ethnologue". Ethnologue Report for the Philippines.
25. "Asia Times". Home; is where the heartbreak is for Japanese-Peruvians by Abraham Lama.
26. CIA World Factbook, Equatorial Guinea.
27. Morocco.com, The Languages of Morocco.
28. , Australian Bureau of Statistics, accessed March 27, 2007
29. "Population by mother tongue". Statistics Canada.

External links

• Ethnologue report for Spanish
• Spanish evolution from Latin
• Template:Es icon Dictionary of the RAE Real Academia Española's official Spanish language dictionary
• Spanish phrasebook on WikiTravel
• The Project Gutenberg EBook of A First Spanish Reader by Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy.

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