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105-640: The language known today as Spanish is derived from spoken Latin , which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Today it is the world's 4th most widely spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. Influenced by the peninsular hegemony of Al-Andalus in the early middle ages, Hispano-Romance varieties borrowed substantial lexicon from Arabic . Upon
210-404: A "redundant" pronoun ( le , les ) appears even in the presence of an explicit noun phrase . (Neither feature occurs in other Western Romance languages , but both are features of Romanian , with pe < PER corresponding to Spanish a .) With regard to subject pronouns, Spanish is a pro-drop language , meaning that the verb phrase can often stand alone without the use of a subject pronoun (or
315-634: A Spanish-based creole language called Chavacano developed in the southern Philippines. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. The local languages of the Philippines also retain significant Spanish influence, with many words derived from Mexican Spanish , owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, until direct governance from Madrid afterwards to 1898. Present tense The present tense ( abbreviated PRES or PRS )
420-603: 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
525-595: A different meaning in Spanish. Later, after the time of intervocalic voicing, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants: Words capital, computar, hospital, recitar and vindicar are learned words; cf. capitālem, computāre, hospitālem, recitāre, and vindicāre and alternate forms caudal, contar, hostal, rezar, and vengar . While voiceless intervocalic consonants regularly became voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops ( d , g , and occasionally b ) were dropped from words altogether through
630-467: 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
735-462: A few; making up 8% of the Spanish dictionary—the second largest lexical influence on Spanish after Latin. It is thought that the bilingualism of the Mozarabs facilitated the large transfer of vocabulary from Arabic to Castilian. The neighboring Romance languages—such as Andalusi Romance , Galician/Portuguese , Catalan , French , and Occitan —contributed greatly to the Spanish lexicon throughout
840-482: 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
945-557: A lesser extent Chile , Colombia , Mexico , Panama and Venezuela , attracted waves of European immigration, Spanish and non-Spanish, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There, the countries' large (or sizable minority) population groups of second- and third-generation descendants adopted the Spanish language as part of their governments' official assimilation policies to include Europeans. In some countries, they had to be Catholics and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to their chosen nation's government. When Puerto Rico became
1050-478: 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
1155-460: A particular grammatical form or set of forms; these may have a variety of uses, not all of which will necessarily refer to present time. For example, in the English sentence "My train leaves tomorrow morning", the verb form leaves is said to be in the present tense, even though in this particular context it refers to an event in future time. Similarly, in the historical present , the present tense
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#17327727471801260-571: A possession of the United States as a consequence of the Spanish–American War , its population—almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean/Spanish ( mulatto and mestizo ) descent—retained its inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue, in co-existence with the American-imposed English as co-official. In the 20th century, more than a million Puerto Ricans migrated to the mainland U.S. (see Puerto Ricans in
1365-508: 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
1470-801: A process called elision . Latin /b/ between vowels usually changed to /v/ in Old Spanish (e.g. ha b ēre > a v er ), while Latin /p/ became /b/ ( sa p ere > sa b er ). In modern times the two phonemes merged into /b/ ( ha b er , sa b er ), realized as [β] between vowels (see Betacism ). Latin voiced stops— /b/ , /d/ , and /ɡ/ , which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition : [ β ] , [ ð ] , and [ ɣ ] , but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin. Many forms with d and g preserved, e.g. ligar, legal, dígito , crudo , are learned words ( Latinisms ); cf.
1575-409: A reader of Modern Spanish can learn to read medieval documents without much difficulty. The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of standardizing the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, and it continues to produce new editions of both from time to time. (The Academy's dictionary
1680-580: A result, their usages and forms are similar. The Latin present tense can be translated as progressive or simple present. Here are examples of the present indicative tense conjugation in Latin . In French , the present tense is used similarly to that of English. Below is an example of present tense conjugation in French . The present indicative is commonly used to express the present continuous. For example, Jean mange may be translated as John eats , John
1785-617: 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
1890-531: 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
1995-475: A subject noun phrase ). In some cases, such as with impersonal verbs referring to meteorological ( llover , to rain; nevar , to snow) or other natural phenomena ( amanecer , to get light out; anochecer , to get dark out), it is ungrammatical to include a subject. Compared to other Romance languages, Spanish has a somewhat freer syntax with relatively fewer restrictions on subject-verb-object word order . Due to prolonged language contact with other languages,
2100-764: Is izquierda "left". Basque is perhaps most evident in some common Spanish surnames, including García and Echeverría . Basque place names also are prominent throughout Spain, because many Castilians who took part in the Reconquista and repopulation of Moorish Iberia by Christians were of Basque lineage. Iberian and Celtiberian likewise are thought to have contributed place names to Spain. Words of everyday use that are attributed to Celtic sources include camino "road", carro "cart", colmena "hive", and cerveza "beer". Suffixes such as - iego : mujeriego "womanizer" and - ego : gallego "Galician" are also attributed to Celtic sources. Influence of Basque phonology
2205-416: 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
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#17327727471802310-426: Is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present tense, it is useful to imagine time as a line on which the past tense , the present and the future tense are positioned. The term present tense is usually used in descriptions of specific languages to refer to
2415-581: 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 the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo , a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile , in
2520-523: Is credited by some researchers with softening the Spanish labiodentals : turning labiodental [v] to bilabial [β] , and ultimately deleting labiodental [f] . Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly as a result of factors internal to the language, not outside influence. It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other. Some words of Greek origin were already present in
2625-400: Is eating . To emphasise the present continuous, expressions such as "en train de" may be used. For example, Jean est en train de manger may be translated as John is eating , John is in the middle of eating. On est en train de chercher un nouvel appartement may be translated as We are looking for a new apartment , We are in the process of finding a new apartment. In Italian ,
2730-399: 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
2835-761: 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
2940-404: Is not only between vowels but also after a vowel and before a sonorant consonant such as /r/ (Latin patrem > Spanish padre )—but not the reverse (Latin partem > Spanish parte , not * parde ). Latin superāre produced both sobrar and its learned doublet superar . Spanish Language Spanish ( español ) or Castilian ( castellano ) is a Romance language of
3045-655: Is now accessible on the Internet.) Today, each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, the discovery and colonization of the Americas by Spanish colonizers brought the language across the Atlantic and to Mexico, Central America, and western and southern South America. Under
3150-467: Is particularly the case in condition clauses and many other adverbial subordinate clauses: If you see him,... ; As soon as they arrive... There is also the historical present , in which the present tense is used to narrate past events. For details of the uses of present tense constructions in English, see Uses of English verb forms . In Modern Greek , the present tense is used in a similar way to
3255-732: Is related to Castile ( Castilla or archaically Castiella ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name Castile , in turn, 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
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3360-844: 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
3465-813: 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
3570-466: 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 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
3675-439: Is used to narrate events that occurred in the past. There are two common types of present tense form in most Indo-European languages : the present indicative (the combination of present tense and indicative mood ) and the present subjunctive (the combination of present tense and subjunctive mood). The present tense is mainly classified into four parts or subtenses. The present indicative of most verbs in modern English has
3780-734: The Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe . Today, it 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
3885-623: The Spanish Empire , where adoption of patterns from the southern peninsular norm of Seville (the largest city of the Crown in the 16th century and the port linking to the Americas) was more pervasive, even though in other regards the influence from the latter norm (associated to Andalusian Spanish ) came to be preponderant in the entire Americas. Spanish varieties henceforth borrowed influence from Amerindian languages , primarily coming from
3990-568: 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)
4095-446: 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
4200-637: The United Nations organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official languages (along with Chinese , English , French , and Russian ; a sixth language, Arabic , was added in 1973). The list of Nobel laureates in Literature includes eleven authors who wrote in Spanish ( José Echegaray , Jacinto Benavente , Gabriela Mistral , Juan Ramón Jiménez , Miguel Ángel Asturias , Pablo Neruda , Vicente Aleixandre , Gabriel García Márquez , Camilo José Cela , Octavio Paz , and Mario Vargas Llosa ). The mention of "influences" on
4305-633: The cardinal directions ( norte, este, sur, oeste ), for example, are all taken from Germanic words (compare north , east , south and west in Modern English ), after the contact with Atlantic sailors. These words did not exist in Spanish prior to the 15th century. Instead, "north" and "south" were septentrion and meridion respectively (both virtually obsolete in Modern Spanish as nouns, unlike their not uncommon adjectival counterparts septentrional and meridional ), while "east"
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4410-405: The present progressive (or present continuous) (e.g. am writing ), the present perfect (e.g. have written ), and the present perfect progressive (e.g. have been writing ). Use of the present tense does not always imply the present time. In particular, the present tense is often used to refer to future events ( I am seeing James tomorrow ; My train leaves at 3 o'clock this afternoon ). This
4515-424: 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 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
4620-644: The 1560s onward the standard written form followed Madrid 's. The Spanish language expanded overseas in the Early Modern period in the wake of the Spanish conquests in the Americas (as well as the Canary Islands ). Besides the Caribbean, the colonial administration in the new territories had its main centres of power located in Mexico City and Lima , which retained more features from the central peninsular norm than other more peripheral territories of
4725-531: The 16th century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries is sometimes called "classical" Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Unlike English and French , it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish. Castilian Spanish originated (after the decline of the Roman Empire ) as a continuation of spoken Latin in several areas of northern and central Spain. Eventually,
4830-404: 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,
4935-595: 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
5040-665: The 20th century, with words borrowed from many fields of activity, including sports, technology, and commerce. The incorporation into Spanish of learned, or "bookish" words from its own ancestor language, Latin , is arguably another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Spanish-speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Spanish. The form of Latin that Spaniards spoke and
5145-563: The Caribbean, the Central-Andean and Mesoamerican regions. Today it is the official language of 20 countries , as well as an official language of numerous international organizations , including the United Nations . The development of Spanish phonology is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages (e.g. Portuguese , Catalan ) by several features: The following features are characteristic of Spanish phonology and also of some other Ibero-Romance languages , but not
5250-654: 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
5355-459: The Iberian Peninsula by the late 16th century. The prestige of Castile and its language was propagated partly by the exploits of Castilian heroes in the battles of the Reconquista —among them Fernán González and Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar ( El Cid )—and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect. The "first written Spanish"
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#17327727471805460-577: 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
5565-741: The Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War , but is no longer spoken there by any significant number of people. As part of Chile since 1888, Spanish is spoken by most people in Easter Island along with Rapa Nui language . Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day it is the most widely used language in government, business, public education,
5670-596: The Middle Ages and into the modern era. Borrowing from Italian occurred most frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries, due largely to the influence of the Italian Renaissance . The creation of the Spanish Empire in the New World led to lexical borrowing from indigenous languages of the Americas , especially vocabulary dealing with flora, fauna, and cultural concepts unique to the Americas. Borrowing from English has become especially strong, beginning in
5775-480: 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
5880-516: The Romance languages as a whole: The Latin system of four verb conjugations (form classes) is reduced to three in Spanish. The Latin infinitives with the endings -ĀRE, -ĒRE, and -ĪRE become Spanish infinitives in -ar , -er , and -ir respectively. The Latin third conjugation —infinitives ending in -ĔRE—are redistributed between the Spanish -er and -ir classes (e.g. facere → hacer , dicere → decir ). Spanish verbal morphology continues
5985-442: The Spanish lexicon contains loanwords from Basque , Hispano-Celtic ( Celtiberian and Gallaecian ), Iberian , Germanic ( Gothic ), Arabic and indigenous languages of the Americas . Accents—used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed syllable in words where stress is not predictable from rules—came into use sporadically in the 15th century, and massively in the 16th century. Their use began to be standardized with
6090-547: The Spanish Crown, the language was used as a tool for colonization by Spanish soldiers, missionaries, conquistadors, and entrepreneurs. In the coming centuries, their descendants continued to spread the language. Use of the language in the Americas was continued by descendants of the Spaniards: Spanish criollos and Mestizos . After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century,
6195-453: The Spanish language refers primarily to lexical borrowing . Throughout its history, Spanish has accepted loanwords , first from pre-Roman languages (including Basque , Iberian , Celtiberian and Gallaecian ), and later from Greek , from Germanic languages , from Arabic , from neighboring Romance languages , from Native American languages , and from English . The most frequently used word that entered Spanish from (or through) Basque
6300-424: The Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español but also castellano (Castilian), 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
6405-502: 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
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#17327727471806510-681: The United States ). A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest, including California , Arizona , New Mexico and Texas , where Spaniards, then criollos ( Tejanos , Californios , etc.) followed by Chicanos ( Mexican Americans ) and later Mexican immigrants, kept the Spanish language alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories following the Mexican–American War . Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants to
6615-712: The United States from Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas (for example, many Cubans arrived in Miami, Florida , beginning with the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and followed by other Latin American groups; the local majority is now Spanish-speaking). Spanish is now treated as the country's "second language," and over 5 percent of the U.S. population are Spanish-speaking, but most Latino / Hispanic Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English. The presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea dates from
6720-457: 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
6825-471: The administration), probably drawing from the speech of the upper classes of Toledo . Features associated with the Castilian patterns of Hispano-Romance also spread west and east to the kingdoms of León and Aragón for the rest of the middle ages, owing to the political prestige achieved by the Kingdom of Castile in the peninsular context and to the lesser literary development of their vernacular norms. From
6930-518: The advent of the Spanish Royal Academy in the 18th century. See also Spanish orthography . The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian in its original variant, and in order to distinguish it from other languages native to parts of Spain, such as Galician, Catalan, Basque, etc. In its earliest documented form, and up through approximately the 15th century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish . From approximately
7035-950: The alternate forms liar, leal, dedo and Old Spanish cruo and its Latin origin crūdus . An exemption to the rule: The retention of the d and g is due to the invalidity of the -ao , -aa , -oo, and -oa hiatuses in Old Spanish that would result from dropping it. In virtually all the Western Romance languages , the Latin voiceless stops — /p/ , /t/ , and /k/ , which are represented orthographically as P, T, and C (including Q) respectively—where they occurred in an "intervocalic" environment (qualified below), underwent one, two, or three successive stages of lenition , from voicing to spirantization to, in some cases, elision (deletion). In Spanish these three consonants generally undergo both voicing and spirantization , resulting in voiced fricatives : [ β ] , [ ð ] , and [ ɣ ] , respectively. Although it
7140-684: 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
7245-500: 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
7350-404: 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
7455-399: The first grammar of Spanish, Gramática de la lengua castellana , and presented it, in 1492, to Queen Isabella , who is said to have had an early appreciation of the usefulness of the language as a tool of hegemony, as if anticipating the empire that was about to be founded with the voyages of Columbus . Because Old Spanish resembles the modern written language to a relatively high degree,
7560-631: 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
7665-466: 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
7770-604: 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
7875-414: The history of Spanish refers to the loss of an unstressed vowel from the syllable immediately preceding or following the stressed syllable. Early in its history, Spanish lost such vowels where they preceded or followed R or L, and between S and T. * Solitario , which is derived from sōlitārium , is a learned word; cf. the alternate form soltero . As also "fábula" from "fabulam", although this last one has
7980-549: 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,
8085-475: The late 10th to the early 11th century. The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile , known as Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise), in his court in Toledo . He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge. Antonio de Nebrija wrote
8190-508: The late 18th century, and it was adopted as the official language when independence was granted in 1968. Spanish is widely spoken in Western Sahara , which was a protectorate/colony of Spain from the 1880s to the 1970s. In 1492 Spain expelled its Jewish population. Their Judaeo-Spanish language, called Ladino, developed along its own lines and continues to be spoken by a dwindling number of speakers, mainly in Israel, Turkey, and Greece. In
8295-405: The loanwords came from was Classical Latin , but also Renaissance Latin , the form of Latin used in original works of the time. Spanish shares with other Romance languages most of the phonological and grammatical changes that characterized Vulgar Latin , such as the abandonment of distinctive vowel length , the loss of the case system for nouns, and the loss of deponent verbs . Syncope in
8400-694: 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
8505-543: The new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population, including the Amerindian majority, to strengthen national unity, and nowadays it is the first and official language of the resulting republics, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies. In the late 19th century, the still-Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico encouraged more immigrants from Spain, and similarly other Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina , Uruguay , and to
8610-734: 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
8715-654: 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 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
8820-533: 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 ,
8925-523: The present indicative tense of imperfective verbs is used in a very similar way to the present indicative in English. It can also be used as present progressive. Below is an example of present indicative tense conjugation in Bulgarian. * Archaic, no infinitive in the modern language. The present tense in Macedonian is expressed using imperfective verbs. The following table shows the conjugation of
9030-495: The present tense in English and can represent the present continuous as well. As with some other conjugations in Greek, some verbs in the present tense accept different (but equivalent) forms of use for the same person. What follows are examples of present tense conjugation in Greek for the verbs βλέπω (see), τρώω (eat) and αγαπώ (love). The Romance languages are derived from Latin , and in particular western Vulgar Latin . As
9135-522: The present tense is used similarly to that of English. What follows is an example of present indicative tense conjugation in Italian . The present tenses of Portuguese and Spanish are similar in form, and are used in similar ways. What follows are examples of the present indicative conjugation in Portuguese . There follow examples of the corresponding conjugation in Spanish . In Bulgarian ,
9240-447: The same form as the infinitive, except for the third-person singular form, which takes the ending -[e]s . The verb be has the forms am , is , are . For details, see English verbs . For the present subjunctive, see English subjunctive . A number of multi-word constructions exist to express the combinations of present tense with the basic form of the present tense is called the simple present ; there are also constructions known as
9345-577: The southward territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Castile , Hispano-Romance norms associated to this polity displaced both Arabic and the Mozarabic romance varieties in the conquered territories, even though the resulting speech also assimilated features from the latter in the process. The first standard written norm of Spanish was brought forward in the 13th century by Alfonso X the Wise (who used Castilian , i.e. Spanish, along with Latin as languages of
9450-488: The spoken Latin that became Spanish. Additionally, many Greek words formed part of the language of the Church. Spanish also borrowed Ancient Greek vocabulary in the areas of medical, technical, and scientific language, beginning as early as the 13th century. The influence of Germanic languages is very little on phonological development, but rather is found mainly in the Spanish lexicon . Words of Germanic origin are common in all varieties of Spanish. The modern words for
9555-537: 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
9660-444: 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,
9765-529: 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
9870-459: The use of some Latin synthetic forms that were replaced by analytic ones in spoken French and (partly) Italian (cf. Sp. lavó , Fr. il a lavé ), and the Spanish subjunctive mood maintains separate present and past-tense forms. Spanish syntax provides overt marking for some direct objects (the so-called "personal a ", see differential object marking for the general phenomenon), and uses clitic doubling with indirect objects, in which
9975-601: The variety spoken in the city of Toledo around the 13th century became the basis for the written standard. With the Reconquista , this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the local Romance dialects, at the same time as it borrowed many words from Andalusi Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabic (the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory ) and medieval Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino). These languages had vanished in
10080-585: 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 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
10185-871: The workplace, cultural arts, and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak, and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan for Catalonia , Balearic Islands and Valencia ; Basque for the Basque provinces and Navarre , and Galician for Galicia . Since 1975, following the death of Franco , Spain has become a multi-party democracy and decentralized country, constituted in autonomous communities . Under this system, some languages of Spain —such as Aranese (an Occitan language of northwestern Catalonia), Basque, Catalan/Valencian, and Galician—have gained co-official status in their respective geographical areas. Others—such as Aragonese , Asturian and Leonese —have been recognized by regional governments. When
10290-582: 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 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
10395-709: Was oriente (or levante ), and "west" was occidente (or poniente ). These older words for "east" and "west" continue to have some use in Modern Spanish. In 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by Moors , who brought in the Arabic language . For about eight hundred years, until the fall of the Emirate of Granada (1492), Spanish borrowed thousands of words from Andalusi Arabic and Andalusi Romance , such as alcalde "mayor", álgebra "algebra", aceite "oil", zanahoria "carrot", alquiler "rent", achacar "to blame", adelfa "oleander", barrio "neighbourhood", chaleco "vest", to name just
10500-581: 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
10605-570: 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
10710-713: 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")
10815-954: Was once speculated that this change came about as a transfer of phonological features from substrate Celtic and Basque languages, which were in geographical proximity to Iberian Vulgar Latin (see Sprachbund ), it is now widely recognized that such change is a natural internal development. Intervocalic /p/ , /t/ , and /k/ reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin (see below), and Latin voiced stops— /b/ , /d/ , and /ɡ/ , which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition : [ β ] , [ ð ] , and [ ɣ ] , but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin. The phonological environment of these changes
10920-462: 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
11025-751: Was traditionally considered to have appeared in the Glosas Emilianenses located in San Millán de la Cogolla , La Rioja . These are "glosses" (translations of isolated words and phrases in a form more like Hispanic Romance than Latin) added between the lines of a manuscript that was written earlier in Latin. Nowadays the language of the Glosas Emilianenses is considered to be closer to the Navarro-Aragonese language than to Spanish proper. Estimates of their date vary from
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