Spanish, also called Castilian (castellano), is the official language of the whole of Spain and of twenty countries worldwide. The 1978 Constitution defines it as "the official Spanish language of the State", which everyone has the duty to know and the right to use, and establishes that the other Spanish languages are co-official in their autonomous communities.
Origins
Like Italian, Spanish derives from the Latin spoken in Hispania. In the early Middle Ages Latin evolved into several Romance varieties: Galician-Portuguese, Astur-Leonese, Castilian, Navarro-Aragonese, Catalan and Mozarabic, the language of the Christians of al-Andalus. Among the earliest written records of an Iberian Romance language are the Glosas Emilianenses, notes written in the tenth or eleventh century in a codex from the monastery of San Millán in La Rioja.
Castilian, born in the county of Castile, spread south with the Reconquista. In the thirteenth century Alfonso X the Wise used it to write historical, legal and scientific works, making it a language of culture. In 1492 Antonio de Nebrija published the Gramática de la lengua castellana, the first grammar of a modern European language. In 1713 the Royal Spanish Academy was founded; under the motto "limpia, fija y da esplendor" it publishes the dictionary and grammar, today together with the academies of the Spanish-speaking countries.
Influences
Besides its Latin base, Spanish took Germanic words from the Visigoths (guerra, ropa) and above all some four thousand words of Arabic origin, such as aceite, almohada, azúcar, alcalde and ojalá (see Muslim Spain). From America came chocolate, tomate, patata and huracán, from Italian terms of art, music and warfare.
Spanish for English and Italian speakers
Spanish shares much vocabulary with Italian and, through Latin, with English. Some key features:
- Pronunciation: j, and g before e/i, are guttural (jamón, gente); in central and northern Spain z, and c before e/i, sound like English th (cerveza), while in Andalusia, the Canaries and Latin America they sound like s. Ll is now pronounced almost everywhere like y.
- Grammar: plurals in -s, two verbs "to be" (ser and estar), haber as the only auxiliary, the polite usted.
- False friends: embarazada means pregnant, éxito success, constipado having a cold, largo long, librería bookshop, sensible sensitive. See our phrasebook.
Spain's other languages
About 40% of Spaniards live in communities with two official languages:
- Catalan (català): co-official in Catalonia, the Balearics and, as Valencian, in the Valencian Community. It is spoken by about ten million people, also in Andorra, French Roussillon and Alghero in Sardinia.
- Galician (galego): co-official in Galicia, closely related to Portuguese.
- Basque (euskera): co-official in the Basque Country and part of Navarre, the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in western Europe.
- Aranese: a variety of Occitan spoken in the Val d'Aran in Catalonia, where it is official.
Asturian (bable) and Aragonese are also recognised and protected. Under Franco the regional languages were excluded from public life; with democracy they returned to schools, administration and the media. Since 2023 they may also be used in the Congress of Deputies.
For Spanish around the world see the spread of Spanish.