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81-801: The Cortes Gerais ( pre-1911 spelling : Cortes Geraes , meaning General Courts in Portuguese ) were the parliament of the Kingdom of Portugal during the Constitutional Monarchy period . The Cortes were established by provision of the Portuguese Constitution of 1822 as a unicameral parliament. However, the Constitutional Charter of 1826 reformed the Cortes as a bicameral legislature, with
162-603: A considerable number of words from Arabic , as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin , the form of Latin in use at that time. According to
243-522: A dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants , known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes , which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ ). See History of Spanish (Modern development of
324-482: A first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos ( Ilustrados ). Despite a public education system set up by the colonial government, by the end of Spanish rule in 1898, only about 10% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, mostly those of Spanish descent or elite standing. Spanish continued to be official and used in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration after
405-468: A further agreement was reached between the various countries, with Portugal, Brazil, and Cape Verde adopting the new standard gradually by the beginning of 2016. The Portuguese language began to be used regularly in documents and poetry around the 12th century. In 1290, King Dinis created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (later moved to Coimbra ) and decreed that Portuguese, then called simply
486-478: A long history in the territory of the current-day United States dating back to the 16th century. In the wake of the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty , hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers became a minoritized community in the United States. The 20th century saw further massive growth of Spanish speakers in areas where they had been hitherto scarce. According to the 2020 census, over 60 million people of
567-508: A primarily Hassaniya Arabic -speaking territory, Spanish was officially spoken as the language of the colonial administration during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Spanish is present in the partially-recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as its secondary official language, and in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf ( Algeria ), where the Spanish language is still taught as
648-617: A second language features characteristics involving the variability of the vowel system. While far from its heyday during the Spanish protectorate in Morocco , the Spanish language has some presence in northern Morocco , stemming for example from the availability of certain Spanish-language media. According to a 2012 survey by Morocco's Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (IRES), penetration of Spanish in Morocco reaches 4.6% of
729-531: A second language, largely by Cuban educators. The number of Spanish speakers is unknown. Spanish is also an official language of the African Union . Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization , it was the language of government, trade, and education, and was spoken as
810-416: Is cognate to the root word of satisfacer ("to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho ("satisfied"). Compare the examples in the following table: Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table: In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent
891-436: Is Latin in origin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Alongside English and French , it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world. Spanish is well represented in the humanities and social sciences . Spanish is also the third most used language on the internet by number of users after English and Chinese and the second most used language by number of websites after English. Spanish
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#1732773353784972-674: Is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain , and about 600 million when including second language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries , as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations . Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese ; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English , Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani ( Hindi - Urdu ); and
1053-399: Is estimated that about 486 million people speak Spanish as a native language , making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers . An additional 75 million speak Spanish as a second or foreign language , making it the fourth most spoken language in the world overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi with a total number of 538 million speakers. Spanish is also
1134-761: Is heavily influenced by Venezuelan Spanish. In addition to sharing most of its borders with Spanish-speaking countries, the creation of Mercosur in the early 1990s induced a favorable situation for the promotion of Spanish language teaching in Brazil . In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President , making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In September 2016 this law
1215-488: Is small, they have been seen as an obstacle to the orthographic unification of the language. Unstressed vowels are usually high, but there are exceptions, including a few pairs of homographs in European Portuguese which vary only in having either a low or a high vowel in an unstressed syllable. To distinguish these, the grave accent was at first placed on unstressed low vowels: cf. pregar "to nail", where
1296-844: Is spoken by very small communities in Angola due to Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned for their country's independence. Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in Africa, namely the cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the Canary Islands , located in the Atlantic Ocean some 100 km (62 mi) off
1377-813: Is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico . The language has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles , Miami , San Antonio , New York , San Francisco , Dallas , Tucson and Phoenix of the Arizona Sun Corridor , as well as more recently, Chicago , Las Vegas , Boston , Denver , Houston , Indianapolis , Philadelphia , Cleveland , Salt Lake City , Atlanta , Nashville , Orlando , Tampa , Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration. Although Spanish has no official recognition in
1458-488: Is the official Spanish language of the State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities... The Royal Spanish Academy ( Real Academia Española ), on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. However, from 1713 to 1923, it called the language castellano . The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by
1539-542: Is used as an official language by many international organizations , including the United Nations , European Union , Organization of American States , Union of South American Nations , Community of Latin American and Caribbean States , African Union , among others. In Spain and some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español but also castellano (Castilian),
1620-578: Is usually assumed to be derived from castillo ('castle'). In the Middle Ages , the language spoken in Castile was generically referred to as Romance and later also as Lengua vulgar . Later in the period, it gained geographical specification as Romance castellano ( romanz castellano , romanz de Castiella ), lenguaje de Castiella , and ultimately simply as castellano (noun). Different etymologies have been suggested for
1701-839: The Chamber of Most Worthy Peers of the Kingdom as its upper house and the Chamber of Gentlemen Deputies of the Portuguese Nation as its lower house . During the brief period in which the Constitution of 1838 was in force (1838-1842), the Chamber of Peers was abolished and replaced by the Chamber of the Senators or Senate. With the restoration of the Constitutional Charter in 1842, the Chamber of Peers
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#17327733537841782-524: The Renaissance , appreciation for classical culture led many authors to imitate Latin and ( Romanized ) Ancient Greek , filling words with a profusion of silent letters and other etymological graphemes , such as ch (pronounced as c/qu ), ph (pronounced as f ), rh , th , y (pronounced as i ), cc , pp , tt , mn (pronounced as n ), sce , sci (pronounced as ce , ci ), bt , pt , mpt (pronounced as t ), and so on, still found today in
1863-568: The Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. Spanish has historically had a significant presence on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba , Bonaire and Curaçao ( ABC Islands ) throughout the centuries and in present times. The majority of the populations of each island (especially Aruba) speaking Spanish at varying although often high degrees of fluency. The local language Papiamentu (Papiamento on Aruba)
1944-568: The Spanish–American War but was eventually replaced by English as the primary language of administration and education by the 1920s. Nevertheless, despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines upon independence in 1946, alongside English and Filipino , a standardized version of Tagalog . Spanish was briefly removed from official status in 1973 but reimplemented under
2025-423: The acute accent was used to mark the stressed vowel whenever it was not in the usual position, more or less as in the orthographies of Spanish and Catalan . For example, the verb critica "he criticizes" bears no accent mark, because it is stressed on the syllable before the last one, like most words that end in -a , but the noun crítica "criticism" requires an accent mark, since it is a proparoxytone . Since
2106-484: The e is pronounced /ɨ/ in European Portuguese, with prègar "to preach", where è is pronounced /ɛ/ , or molhada /u/ "wet" with mòlhada /ɔ/ "bundle". But in Brazilian Portuguese both words in each example are pronounced the same way, so the grave accent is not used: pregar /e/ "to nail/to preach", molhada /o/ "wet/bundle"; the intended meaning is inferred from context. The grave accent
2187-433: The height of the vowels a , e and o is also distinctive in stressed syllables (see Portuguese phonology ), high stressed vowels were marked with a circumflex accent , â , ê , ô , to be differentiated from the low stressed vowels, written á , é , ó . The choice of the acute for low vowels and the circumflex for high vowels went against the conventions of other Romance languages such as French or Italian, but it
2268-440: The "common language", would henceforth be used instead of Latin , and named the "Portuguese language". In 1296, it was adopted by the royal chancellery and began to be used for writing laws and in notaries. The medieval spelling of Portuguese was not uniform, since it had no official standard, but most authors used an essentially phonemic orthography , with minor concessions to etymology common in other Romance languages, such as
2349-631: The 1911 orthography aimed to be phonetic in the sense that, given the spelling of a word, there would be no ambiguity about its pronunciation. For that reason, it had certain characteristics which later produced inconsistencies between the European and the Brazilian orthographies. In unstressed syllables, hiatuses were originally distinguished from diphthongs with a trema . For instance, writing saüdade , traïdor , constituïção , so that they would be pronounced sa-udade , tra-idor , constitu-ição . But
2430-404: The 2021–2022 school year alone. The local business process outsourcing industry has also helped boost the language's economic prospects. Today, while the actual number of proficient Spanish speakers is around 400,000, or under 0.5% of the population, a new generation of Spanish speakers in the Philippines has likewise emerged, though speaker estimates vary widely. Aside from standard Spanish,
2511-595: 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 . Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2023, it
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2592-604: The 20th century. The formation of the Portuguese Republic in 1911 was motivation for the establishment of orthographic reform in Portugal and its overseas territories and colonies. Brazil would adopt an orthographic standard based on, but not identical to, the Portuguese standard a few decades later. Further minor spelling reforms were approved in lusophone countries over the rest of the 20th century. In 1990,
2673-510: The 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo , a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile , in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas. As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary
2754-481: The Chinese S.A.R. of Macau and the Indian state of Goa and territories of Daman and Diu , and Dadra and Nagar Haveli . In 1938 , Brazil set up an orthography of its own, with the same general principles as the Portuguese orthography, but not entirely identical to it. The authors of the first spelling reform of Portuguese, imbued with the modern ideas of phonology , rejected the etymological spellings current in
2835-654: The Equatoguinean education system and is the primary language used in government and business. Whereas it is not the mother tongue of virtually any of its speakers, the vast majority of the population is proficient in Spanish. The Instituto Cervantes estimates that 87.7% of the population is fluent in Spanish. The proportion of proficient Spanish speakers in Equatorial Guinea exceeds the proportion of proficient speakers in other West and Central African nations of their respective colonial languages. Spanish
2916-705: The Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque , Iberian , Lusitanian , Celtiberian and Gallaecian . The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era , the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages — Mozarabic ( Andalusi Romance ), Navarro-Aragonese , Leonese , Catalan/Valencian , Portuguese , Galician , Occitan , and later, French and Italian . Spanish also borrowed
2997-540: The Old Spanish sibilants) for details. The Gramática de la lengua castellana , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija , was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I , she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to
3078-589: The Royal Spanish Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish 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. The term castellano is related to Castile ( Castilla or archaically Castiella ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name Castile , in turn,
3159-502: The U.S. population were of Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin. In turn, 41.8 million people in the United States aged five or older speak Spanish at home, or about 13% of the population. Spanish predominates in the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico , where it is also an official language along with English. Spanish is by far the most common second language in the country, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included. While English
3240-457: The administration of Ferdinand Marcos two months later. It remained an official language until the ratification of the present constitution in 1987, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. Additionally, the constitution, in its Article XIV, stipulates that the Government shall provide the people of the Philippines with a Spanish-language translation of
3321-560: The aforementioned vowels are stressed before the nasal consonants m or n and followed by another vowel —, European Portuguese includes either the high or low vowel forms, while Brazilian Portuguese only uses low vowels in such positions. In 1990, an orthographic agreement was reached between the Portuguese-language countries with the intent of creating a single common orthography for Portuguese. This spelling reform went into effect in Brazil on 1 January 2009. In Portugal,
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3402-678: The application of International Treaties, as per the Vienna Convention, states that the text of a treaty cannot be changed, and this one has undergone at least two revisions. Spanish language Spanish ( español ) or Castilian ( castellano ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe . Today, it
3483-684: The classic hispanus or hispanicus took the suffix -one from Vulgar Latin , as happened with other words such as bretón (Breton) or sajón (Saxon). Like the other Romance languages , the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin , which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War , beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages )—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages , and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in
3564-500: The consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v . Typical of Spanish (as also of neighboring Gascon extending as far north as the Gironde estuary , and found in a small area of Calabria ), attributed by some scholars to a Basque substratum was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it
3645-404: The country's constitution. In recent years changing attitudes among non-Spanish speaking Filipinos have helped spur a revival of the language, and starting in 2009 Spanish was reintroduced as part of the basic education curriculum in a number of public high schools, becoming the largest foreign language program offered by the public school system, with over 7,000 students studying the language in
3726-450: The distinction is still retained in some). The unstressed vowels e and o were also retained for word-family homogeneity and etymology when they were pronounced as i or u , respectively, and the digraph ou was differentiated from o , even though many speakers now pronounced both as /o/ . These distinctions have close parallels in the orthographies of other West European languages. Since word stress can be distinctive in Portuguese,
3807-547: The end of a word. Although the vowel u can also be nasal before other vowels, this happens in so few words ( mui , muito , muita , muitos , muitas ) that marking its nasality was not considered necessary. The acute accent was used also to mark the second vowel of a hiatus in a stressed syllable, where a diphthong would normally be expected, distinguishing for example conclui "he concludes" from concluí "I concluded", saia "that he leave" from saía "he used to leave", or fluido "fluid" from fluído "flowed". Initially,
3888-683: The following table: Spanish is marked by palatalization of the Latin double consonants ( geminates ) nn and ll (thus Latin annum > Spanish año , and Latin anellum > Spanish anillo ). The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably " fortified " to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with
3969-466: The former British colony of Belize (known until 1973 as British Honduras ) where English is the sole official language, according to the 2022 census, 54% of the total population are able to speak the language. Due to its proximity to Spanish-speaking countries and small existing native Spanish speaking minority, Trinidad and Tobago has implemented Spanish language teaching into its education system. The Trinidadian and Tobagonian government launched
4050-604: The grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire." From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America . Miguel de Cervantes , author of Don Quixote , is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes"). In
4131-684: The language from the Kingdom of Castile , contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician , Basque , Asturian , Catalan/Valencian , Aragonese , Occitan and other minor languages. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole of Spain, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other 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
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#17327733537844212-549: The language's hegemony in an intensely centralising Spanish state were established from the 18th century onward. Other European territories in which it is also widely spoken include Gibraltar and Andorra . Spanish is also spoken by immigrant communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom , France , Italy , and Germany . Spanish is an official language of the European Union . Today,
4293-404: The letter u is, exceptionally, pronounced in the digraphs gue , gui , que , qui , rather than silent as usual; e.g. agüentar , sagüim , freqüente , eqüidade . However, there is regional variation, with for example the u being pronounced in a few Brazilian Portuguese accents qüestão , but not in European Portuguese questão . Although the number of words with such divergent pronunciations
4374-462: The literacy of its citizens, charged a commission of philologists with defining a standard orthography for Portuguese. The result was what has come to be known in Portugal as the orthographic reform of Gonçalves Viana . The new standard became official in Portugal and its overseas territories at the time, which are today the independent nations of Angola , Cape Verde , Guinea-Bissau , Mozambique , São Tomé and Príncipe , and East Timor , as well as
4455-694: The majority of the Spanish speakers live in Hispanic America . Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure —of Argentina , Bolivia (co-official with 36 indigenous languages), Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica , Cuba , Dominican Republic , Ecuador , El Salvador , Guatemala , Honduras , Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua , Panama , Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní ), Peru (co-official with Quechua , Aymara , and "the other indigenous languages"), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay , and Venezuela . Spanish language has
4536-734: The northwest of the African mainland. The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands traces its origins back to the Castilian conquest in the 15th century , and, in addition to a resemblance to Western Andalusian speech patterns, it also features strong influence from the Spanish varieties spoken in the Americas, which in turn have also been influenced historically by Canarian Spanish. The Spanish spoken in North Africa by native bilingual speakers of Arabic or Berber who also speak Spanish as
4617-428: The orthographic system, both in Brazil and Portugal, determined the usage of diacritics in cases where two words would otherwise be homographic but not homophonous , such as acôrdo , "agreement", distinguishing it from acórdo , "I wake up". This principle was abandoned in all but a dozen cases in 1945 in Portugal and in 1973 in Brazil. (In most cases the homographs were different parts of speech , meaning that context
4698-452: The orthographies of French and English . Contrary to neighboring languages such as Spanish or French, whose orthographies were set by language academies in the 17th century (French) and the 18th century (Spanish), Portuguese had no official spelling until the early 20th century; authors wrote as they pleased with substantial difference in spelling or other elements. In 1911, the newly formed Portuguese Republic, concerned with improving
4779-533: The population. Many northern Moroccans have rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, with Spanish being particularly significant in areas adjacent to Ceuta and Melilla. Spanish also has a presence in the education system of the country (through either selected education centers implementing Spain's education system, primarily located in the North, or the availability of Spanish as foreign language subject in secondary education). In Western Sahara , formerly Spanish Sahara ,
4860-433: The previous centuries, preferring a more phonetic orthography, like those of Spanish and Italian . On the other hand, considering that the period of Galician-Portuguese troubadorian poetry had been a golden age of Portuguese literature, they aimed to keep the new orthography as close to the medieval spelling as possible, in spite of some phonetic changes which the language had undergone. The resulting orthographic standard
4941-404: The pronunciation of these words is not uniform. Many speakers say sau-dade and trai-dor , especially in fast speech. Furthermore, there are no minimal pairs that distinguish a hiatus from a falling diphthong in unstressed syllables. For this reason, marking unstressed hiatuses came to be seen as unnecessary, and these tremas were eventually abolished. The trema was also used in the words where
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#17327733537845022-502: The reform was signed into law by the President on 21 July 2008, allowing for a six-year adaptation period, during which both orthographies co-existed. The legality of this decision is questioned, as the main bases of the International Treaty that governs the application of the new spelling reform are yet to be established, chiefly the common vocabulary drawn by all participating countries, that still does not exist. Also,
5103-472: The same way, and éi appears only by convention in some oxytone plural nouns and adjectives. This led to divergent spellings such as idéia (Brazil) and ideia (Portugal). Due to differing pronunciations, Brazilian spelling has a , ê or ô in several words where the European orthography has, respectively, á , é or ó . For example, compare pensamos , gênero , tônico (Brazil) with pensámos , género , tónico (Portugal). This happens because — when
5184-469: The seat of the Portuguese parliament , being presently referred as the São Bento Palace . Reforms of Portuguese orthography The Portuguese language began to be used regularly in documents and poetry around the 12th century. Unlike neighboring Romance languages that adopted formal orthographies by the 18th century, the Portuguese language did not have a uniform spelling standard until
5265-638: The second e is pronounced /ɛ/ , as opposed to the second e in intercessão , which is pronounced /ɨ/ . Other examples of words where a silent consonant was left to lower the previous vowel are objecção and factor . In Brazilian Portuguese, the vowels in question are pronounced just like any other unstressed vowels, and, since there is no phonetic ambiguity to undo, the words are simply spelled objeção , fator , and so on. The orthography distinguished between stressed éi and stressed ei . In Brazilian Portuguese, these diphthongs are indeed different, but in most dialects of European Portuguese both are pronounced
5346-496: The spellings being used in the two countries. Even though both were based on the same general principles, phonetic differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese had led to divergent spellings in some cases. Various attempts were made in the remainder of the 20th century to bring the two orthographies closer to each other, sometimes with modest success, other times without success. To this day, they do not coincide completely. Notwithstanding its traces of etymology,
5427-537: The term español (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, español derives from the Occitan word espaignol and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin * hispaniolus ('of Hispania'). Hispania was the Roman name for the entire Iberian Peninsula . There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that
5508-444: The theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal , local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos , and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo , where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese , and, according to some authors,
5589-465: The third most used language on the Internet , after English and Chinese. Spanish is the official language of Spain . Upon the emergence of the Castilian Crown as the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the Middle Ages, the Romance vernacular associated with this polity became increasingly used in instances of prestige and influence, and the distinction between "Castilian" and "Spanish" started to become blurred. Hard policies imposing
5670-537: The use of c for /ts/ before e or i , but ç otherwise, or the use of ss for /s/ between vowels, but s otherwise. King Diniz, who was an admirer of the poetry of the troubadours and a poet himself, popularized the Occitan digraphs nh and lh for the palatal consonants /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ , which until then had been spelled with several digraphs, including nn and ll , as in Spanish . These early forms of Old Portuguese spelling in transition have been referred to as Latin–Portuguese or Latin-Romance. During
5751-462: The world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico . Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group , in which the language is also known as Castilian ( castellano ). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in
5832-421: Was already commonplace in Portuguese before the 20th century. (In many words, Portuguese ê and ô correspond to the Latin long vowels ē , ō .) Nasal vowels and nasal diphthongs usually appear before the orthographic nasal consonants n , m , in which case they do not need to be identified with diacritics, but the tilde was placed on nasal a and nasal o when they occurred before another letter, or at
5913-458: Was also restored as the upper chamber of the Cortes. The name of the legislature originates from the traditional Portuguese Cortes , the assemblies of representatives of the three estates , during the period of absolute monarchy . Since 1834, the Cortes had their seat in the Palace of the Cortes in Lisbon . This building was originally a Benedictine monastery and continues to be until today
5994-634: Was developed in the cities of Toledo , in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid , from the 1570s. The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages , including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin vīta > Spanish vida ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in
6075-622: Was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages ). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista , and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus , much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic -derived words, make up around 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language
6156-502: Was enough to distinguish them.) The orthography set by the 1911 reform is essentially the one still in use today on both sides of the Atlantic, with only minor adjustments having been made to the vowels, consonants, and digraphs. Since then, the only remaining significant differences between the two standards, and only substantial changes addressed in the 1990 spelling reform, were in the use of diacritics and silent consonants. Brazil
6237-705: Was essentially a compromise between these intents, on one hand, and common traditions, on the other: in a few cases, spelling conventions which went against etymology but had long become customary were made official. Thus, the reform kept some graphemic distinctions for phonological traits which were not present in every dialect, but still present in at least some areas: between z and intervocalic s ( /dz/ and /z/ in medieval Portuguese, but now reduced to /z/ in most dialects), between c/ç and s(s) ( /ts/ and /s/ in medieval Portuguese, but now reduced to /s/ in most dialects), and between ch and x (originally /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ , now just /ʃ/ in most dialects, although
6318-417: Was eventually abolished, except in a small number of contractions. In other cases, where an unstressed low vowel was the result of the elision of the consonants c or p before c , ç , t , the consonant was kept in the spelling, to denote the quality of the preceding vowel. For example, in the word intercepção , which is stressed on its last syllable, the letter p is not pronounced, but indicates that
6399-713: Was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h- , still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects, it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and neighboring Romance languages, there are many f -/ h - doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both words pertaining to depth in Spanish, though fondo means "bottom", while hondo means "deep"); additionally, hacer ("to make")
6480-508: Was never consulted about the orthographic reform of 1911, and so it did not adopt it. In the decades that followed, negotiations were held between representatives of Brazil and Portugal, with the intent of agreeing on a uniform orthography for Portuguese, but progress was slow. In 1931, Portugal and Brazil finally signed an orthographic agreement, on the basis of which Brazil established its own official orthography, in 1943. Soon after, however, it became apparent that there were differences between
6561-462: Was revoked by Michel Temer after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff . In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken. Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country located entirely in Africa, with the language introduced during the Spanish colonial period . Enshrined in the constitution as an official language (alongside French and Portuguese), Spanish features prominently in
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