Spanish - Language Overview

I started learning Spanish in 9th grade, two years after French. That way, I had both an advantage and a disadvantage for learning Spanish. On the one hand, I recognised many words and grammar structures from French, but on the other hand, I sometimes mixed up vocabulary too.

Spanish

Geographical Extension

Spanish is spoken in Spain, parts of central America and all but one countries in south America (exception: Brazil where they speak Portuguese).

Spoken by

Spanish is spoken by about 300 million native speakers.

Language Family and History

Spanish is a Romance language. It is closely related to Portuguese and Catalan as all three languages come from the Iberian peninsula.

The Iberians were the first inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula. At about 600 B.C., the Celtic moved there and mixed with the Iberians. When the Romans conquered the Iberian peninsula about 300 B.C., Latin became the main language but was influenced by the former languages. The Romans probably even brought the Germanic influence with them. Between about 700 and 1500, so for a period of almost 800 years, Spain was ruled by the Arabic speaking Moor. Due to that, Spanish is the Romance language which has the most words with Arabic origin.

From all the Spanish dialects, the old Castilian (Spanish) became the prominent one when Castile became a kingdom in 1085. During the next 200 years, Castilian became the official written language and replaced Latin. Over the time, the Castilian language expanded over most of the Iberian peninsula and replaced the other dialects and Arabic.

Grammar Difficulty

Spanish grammar has about the same difficulty as French. It is more complex than the English grammar. Spanish conjugates all verbs, for example, and changes adjectives depending on number and gender of the corresponding noun. It has both male and female nouns (and different articles for male and female). In contrast to English, the Spanish language doesn’t need the personal pronouns and only uses them for clarification or stressing. The subject is usually clear from the conjugated verb.

Pronunciation Difficulty

The Spanish language has certain sounds which may prove difficult to pronounce for English natives. On the other hand, especially the European Spanish tends to “build” their words as they are spoken. The English word “football”, for example, is written “fútbol”, thus imitating the pronunciation.

Special Facts

After Mandarin Chinese, Hindi and English, Spanish is the language with the fourth most native speakers throughout the world. Only English is learnt by more people as a second language.

In Spain, Spanish is only one of four languages but all Spanish people know it. The Spanish spoken in various countries varies slightly in pronunciation and vocabulary.

The United States have more native Spanish speakers than even Spain and are in second place worldwide after Mexico.