Spanish / Español

History and Evolution

Spanish is a major world language that belongs to the Ibero-Romance group of the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family.

Spanish emerged from the dialects of Late Vulgar Latin spoken in the Iberian Peninsula after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE.

Muslim Moors arrived in Spain in 711 CE and conquered the southern territory, bringing with them the Arabic language. In these areas, Christians were largely bilingual, speaking a now-extinct Spanish-Arabic creole called Mozarabic.

In the 9th century, the Kingdom of Castille spearheaded the Reconquest, a campaign to regain territory lost to the Moors. Over the next centuries, reconquistadores spread their Castilian Spanish dialect throughout the peninsula as they advanced from the north, retaking the central and southern regions.

The year 1492 was a turning point for the Spanish language. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella successfully expelled the Moors, ending the Reconquest, and commissioned Columbus’s voyage of discovery to the New World, making Spain a world power and Spanish the language of international diplomacy and trade. That year, Antonio de Nebrija presented his Gramática de la lengua castellana (Grammar of the Castilian Language), the first grammar of a modern European language, to Queen Isabella. When she asked him about the purpose of the text, he replied that it would be an instrument of empire.

Indeed, beginning in the early 16th century, the Spanish Empire rapidly expanded throughout the New World, bringing the Spanish language to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and into the Pacific, including the Philippines. Contact with indigenous languages, such as Nahuatl, brought new words into the Spanish lexicon.

Spanish literature and letters flourished during the apogee of Spanish political power from the 16th to 17th centuries. In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes published the first volume of Don Quixote, which is widely considered a foundational text in modern European literature and the most important work written in the Spanish language.

In 1713, a royal Charter founded La Real Academia Española (The Royal Spanish Academy) to help standardize the language and its orthography (spelling), publishing an authoritative dictionary in 1780. Their efforts helped to establish Castilian Spanish as the prestige dialect and the standard for administration and literature throughout the colonies.

During the wars of independence throughout the Americas in the 19th century, the Spanish-speaking elites encouraged the use of Spanish among indigenous peoples and new immigrant populations in order to facilitate national unity.

Geographic Distribution

Spanish is spoken by approximately 400 million native speakers, making it the second most commonly spoken native language in the world, after Mandarin. It is the official language of 21 countries in Europe, North and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. It is also widely used in Brazil, Belize, Andorra, Gibraltar, and Trinidad and Tobago. With almost 50 million native speakers, the United States has the largest Spanish-speaking population in the world; Spanish is widely spoken in the south and west.

While all Spanish dialects use the same written standard, pronunciation and lexicon vary by geographical area, though all dialects are mutually intelligible.

Spanish is divided into Peninsular (European) Spanish and Hispanic American Spanish. The Castilian dialect remains the prestige variety of Peninsular Spanish and is used as the standard language of governance, media, and business. Other dialects include Andalusian, Canarian, Catalan, and Galician. In Latin America, major Spanish dialect groups are divided by geographical region, including Mexican, Central American, Caribbean, Andean-Pacific, Rioplatense (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay), and Chilean Spanish.

Spanish creoles are still spoken in the former Pacific colonies of the Philippines, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, along with Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao in the Caribbean.

In 1492, Spain expelled not only the Moors, but also the Jews, who brought Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) to their new homes in Israel, Turkey, and Greece, where it is still spoken in small communities.

Prominence in Society

Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also an official language of the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the Union of South American Nations, and the Organization of American States, among other international organizations.

Spanish literature enjoys worldwide prominence; 11 Spanish-speaking authors have won Nobel Prizes in Literature. It is also the third most commonly used language on the internet, after English and Mandarin.

Spanish is the most commonly taught foreign language in the United States; in Europe, it is second only to English.

Unique Characteristics

Spanish is a phonetic language, meaning that its orthography (spelling) closely mirrors its pronunciation. It is an inflected, gendered language—nouns and adjectives must agree in both gender and number. Sentences typically follow the subject-verb-object sequence and adjectives are placed after nouns, e.g. España expulsó a los moros árabes en 1492 (Spain/expelled/the/Moors/Arabic/in/1492).

Spanish is considered a “null-subject” language, meaning that the subject can often be omitted because it is reflected in the verb’s conjugation: Yo hablo español and Hablo español (I speak Spanish) contain the same information, regardless of whether the subject yo (I) is used.

In most varieties, the formal usted and ustedes (plural) are used as a marker of respect for the second-personal singular tu (you). The second-person plural vosotros (you all) is used in Peninsular Spanish, rarely in Latin American varieties.

Loanwords in English

The Spanish language has given English hundreds of loanwords.

• chocolate
• tequila
• mesa (“table”; high plains)
• sierra (mountain range)
• tornado
• armadillo (“little armored one”; a nocturnal mammal covered in bony plates)
• bronco (wild or untamed horse)
• llama (a pack animal with a furry fleece)
• mosquito (a bloodsucking insect)
• aficionado (a person who is enthusiastic about a sport, activity, or subject)
• fiesta (a religious festival, a party)
• macho (being aggresively masculine)
• tango (a ballroom dance with dramatic postures and pauses)
• vigilante (watchman, guard)
• guerrilla (literally, “small war”; a clandestine soldier)
• armada (a fleet of warships)
• conquistador (conqueror)

The Spanish language also had a strong influence on place names in the United States. The state names “Arizona,” “California,” “Colorado,” “Florida,” “Montana,” “Nevada,” “New Mexico,” “Texas,” and “Utah” all derive from Spanish words or names.

Say Whaaat?

When Carthaginians settled the Iberian peninsula around 300 BCE, they named it Ispania, “Land of the Rabbits,” referencing the large native rabbit population. Ispania was Latinized to Hispania, which later became España.

Contrary to popular belief, the prestigious Castilian accent, which is characterized by lisped pronunciation of some consonants, does not stem from medieval Spaniard subjects imitating their king. The only Spanish king known to have a lisp was Pedro of Castile, who reigned 200 years before this unique pronunciation emerged in the 16th century.

As a vowel-heavy language, there are an estimated 40,000 words and verb conjugations that use all 5 vowels in the Spanish alphabet, such as murciélago (bat).

Although English and Spanish share many similar words due to shared Latin influence, there are some humorous “false friends,” such as Estoy embarazada, which means “I’m pregnant,” not “I’m embarrassed.”

Writer: Carly Ottenbreit