Spanish Language

I

Introduction

Spanish Language, official language of Spain and the native language of 322 million to 358 million people in the world. Many of those people live in the other countries where Spanish is the official language: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and is widely spoken in several other nations, including Canada, Morocco, the Philippines, and the United States.

The Spanish language boasts a literary history that includes authors such as Miguel de Cervantes of Spain, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda of Chile, and Octavio Paz of Mexico. See Spanish Literature; Latin American Literature.

Spanish is a member of the Romance language group in the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European language family (see Language). Spanish has two major dialects: Andalusian and Castilian. These dialects generally differ in pronunciation of the letter combinations ce, ze, and za. Speakers of the Andalusian dialect pronounce these combinations with an s sound, while Castilian speakers pronounce them with a th sound.

II

General Characteristics

Speakers of Spanish share a common linguistic system and a common grammar. Although inhabitants of the various provinces of Spain and the various countries have slightly differing vocabularies and pronunciation, and use different expressions, these variations do not hamper communication.

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A

Phonetics

The Spanish alphabet consists of 27 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z. The vowels of this alphabet (a, e, i, o, u) sound roughly like the English words ha, hay, he, ho, and who. The Spanish language also contains 14 diphthongs (speech sounds) that combine the strong vowels (a, e, o) with the weak ones (i, u) to create distinct sounds. Examples of these are ue, as in bueno (good), and io, as in dios (god). The letter y serves as both a consonant, as in yodo (iodine), and a semivowel, as in bueyes (oxen).

Unlike vowels, the consonants of the Spanish alphabet cannot be combined to create new sounds. However, there are some notable issues with consonants. The consonants b and v are pronounced very similarly to each other, as are ll and y. Spanish speakers also drop h sounds at the beginning of words, so that horario (schedule) and historia (history) are pronounced as if they were spelled orario and istoria. These three elements of the language account for the most common mistakes made by people learning Spanish as a second language: confusing a b with a v, mistaking an ll for a y, and adding the h sounds to the beginning of words with a silent h.

Most Spanish words are pronounced with the stress on the second-to-last syllable. Words ending in consonants other than n or s, however, are stressed on the last syllable. Words whose pronunciation requires the stress to fall on a syllable other than the second-to-last or last syllable, or that require the breakup of a diphthong, carry an accent mark on the vowel of the stressed syllable. Examples of these situations are pájaro (bird), with the accent on the first a, and día (day), with the i and a sounds pronounced distinctly. In rare words, a dieresis over the u (ü) indicates that a u should not form part of a diphthong. One important punctuation note is that questions and exclamations in written forms are indicated by an inverted question mark (¿) or exclamation point (¡) at the beginning of the sentence and then a standard one at the end of the sentence.

B

Vocabulary

Most Spanish words come from the Latin language (the language of the Roman Empire). But because so many people speak Spanish in so many places, the language quickly adopts new words and borrows words from other languages, particularly Arabic, English, and continental European languages such as French and Italian. In the Caribbean region and in Central and South America, indigenous languages have heavily influenced Spanish. An organization called the Royal Spanish Academy of Language has branches in countries where Spanish is spoken and establishes norms of spelling and grammatical forms.

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