Spanish () or
Castilian (
castellano) is an
Indo-European,
Romance language that originated in northern
Spain, and gradually spread in the
Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken to
Africa, the
Americas, and
Asia Pacific with the expansion of the
Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Today, between 322 and 400 million people speak Spanish as a native language,
[Universidad de México][Instituto Cervantes ("El Mundo" news)] making it the world's second or third most-spoken language by native speakers, depending on the sources.
[Ethnologue, 1999][CIA World Factbook, Field Listing - Languages (World).]
Naming and origin
Spaniards tend to call this language
(Spanish) when contrasting it with languages of other states, such as
French and
English, but call it
(Castilian), that is, the language of the
Castile region, when contrasting it with other
languages spoken in Spain such as
Galician,
Basque, and
Catalan. This reasoning also holds true for the language's preferred name in some
Hispanic American countries. In this manner, the
Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the
official language of the whole Spanish State, as opposed to (lit.
the other Spanish languages). Article III reads as follows:
{(({Cquote|
The name
Castellano (
Castilian), which refers directly to the origins of the Language and the sociopolitical context in which it was introduced in the Americas, is preferred in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Chile, instead of
, which is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole in the rest of Latin America.
Some Spanish speakers consider
a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English.
Geographic distribution
Spanish is one of the official languages of the
European Union, the
Organization of American States, the
Organization of Ibero-American States, the
United Nations, and the
Union of South American Nations.
Hispanosphere
It is estimated that the combined total of native and non-native Spanish speakers is approximately 500 million, likely making it the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after
English and
Chinese).
[Universidad de México<][Instituto Cervantes ("El Mundo" news)]
Today, Spanish is an official language of Spain, most
Latin American countries, and
Equatorial Guinea; 20 nations speak it as their primary language. Spanish also is one of
six official languages of the
United Nations.
Mexico has the world's largest Spanish-speaking population, and Spanish is the second most-widely spoken language in the
United States [CIA The World Factbook United States] and the most popular studied foreign language in
U.S. schools and universities.
[, Statistical Abstract of the United States: page 47: Table 47: Languages Spoken at Home by Language: 2003][, MLA Fall 2002.] Global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and
Chinese.
Europe
Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country for which it is named and from which it originated. It is also spoken in
Gibraltar, though English is the official language.
[CIA World Factbook — Gibraltar] Likewise, it is spoken in
Andorra though
Catalan is the official language.
It is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the
United Kingdom,
France, and
Germany.
[BBC Education — Languages, Languages Across Europe — Spanish.] Spanish is an official language of the
European Union. In Switzerland, Spanish is the
mother tongue of 1.7% of the population, representing the first minority after the 4 official languages of the country.
The Americas
Latin America
Most Spanish speakers are in
Latin America; of all countries with majority Spanish speakers, only
Spain is outside of the
Americas.
Mexico has the most native speakers of any country. Nationally, Spanish is the official language of
Argentina,
Bolivia (co-official
Quechua and
Aymara),
Chile,
Colombia,
Costa Rica,
Cuba,
Dominican Republic,
Ecuador,
El Salvador,
Guatemala,
Honduras,
Mexico ,
Nicaragua,
Panama,
Paraguay (co-official
Guaraní[Ethnologue – Paraguay(2000). Guaraní is also the most-spoken language in Paraguay by its native speakers.]),
Peru (co-official
Quechua and, in some regions,
Aymara),
Uruguay, and
Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language (co-official with
English) in the U.S. commonwealth of
Puerto Rico.
Spanish has no official recognition in the former
British colony of
Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population.
[Belize Population and Housing Census 2000] Mainly, it is spoken by Hispanic descendants who remained in the region since the 17th century; however, English is the official language.
[CIA World Factbook — Belize]
Spain colonized
Trinidad and Tobago first in 1498, leaving the
Carib people the Spanish language. Also the
Cocoa Panyols, laborers from Venezuela, took their culture and language with them; they are accredited with the music of "
Parang" ("
Parranda") on the island. Because of Trinidad's location on the South American coast, the country is much influenced by its Spanish-speaking neighbors. A recent census shows that more than 1,500 inhabitants speak Spanish. In 2004, the government launched the
Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005.
[The Secretariat for The Implementation of Spanish, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago] Government regulations require Spanish to be taught, beginning in primary school, while thirty percent of public employees are to be linguistically competent within five years. The government also announced that Spanish will be the country's second official language by 2020, beside English.
Spanish is important in
Brazil because of its proximity to and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbors; for example, as a member of the
Mercosur trading bloc.
[MERCOSUL, Portal Oficial (Portuguese)] In 2005, the
National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the
President, making Spanish available as a foreign language in secondary schools.
[BrazilMag.com, 8 August 2005.] In many border towns and villages (especially on the Uruguayan-Brazilian border), a
mixed language known as
Portuñol is spoken.
United States
In the 2006 census, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were
Hispanic or
Latino by origin;
[U.S. Census Bureau Hispanic or Latino by specific origin.] 34 million people, 12.2 percent, of the population older than 5 years speak Spanish at home.
[U.S. Census Bureau 1. Percent of People 5 Years and Over Who Speak Spanish at Home: 2006, U.S. Census Bureau 2. 34,044,945 People 5 Years and Over Who Speak Spanish at Home: 2006] Spanish has a
long history in the United States (many south-western states were part of Mexico and Spain), and it recently has been revitalized by much immigration from Latin America. Spanish is the most widely taught foreign language in the country.
[, MLA Fall 2002.] Although the United States has no formally designated "official languages," Spanish is formally recognized at the state level in various states besides English; in the U.S. state of
New Mexico for instance, 30% of the population speaks the language. It also has strong influence in metropolitan areas such as
Los Angeles,
Miami,
San Antonio,
New York City, and in the 2000s the language has rapidly expanded in
Atlanta,
Houston,
Phoenix and other major Sun-Belt cities. Spanish is the dominant spoken language in
Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. In total, the U.S. has the world's fifth-largest Spanish-speaking population.
[Facts, Figures, and Statistics About Spanish, American Demographics, 1998.]
Asia
Spanish was an official language of the
Philippines but was never spoken by a majority of the population. Movements for most of the masses to learn the language were started but were stopped by the friars. Its importance fell in the first half of the 20th century following the U.S. occupation and administration of the islands. The introduction of the English language in the Philippine government system put an end to the use of Spanish as the official language. The language lost its official status in 1973 during the
Ferdinand Marcos administration.
(See Article XV, Section 3(3)
Spanish is spoken mainly by small communities of Filipino-born Spaniards, Latin Americans, and Filipino
mestizos (mixed race), descendants of the early colonial Spanish settlers. Throughout the 20th century, the Spanish language has declined in importance compared to English and
Tagalog. According to the 1990 Philippine census, there were 2,658 native speakers of Spanish.
No figures were provided during the 1995 and 2000 censuses; however, figures for 2000 did specify there were over 600,000 native speakers of
Chavacano, a
Spanish-based creole language spoken in
Cavite and
Zamboanga. In Tagalog, there are 4,000 Spanish adopted words and around 6,000 Spanish adopted words in Visayan and other Philippine languages as well.
[1,816,389 Spanish speakers —]
. The Cervantes Institute source is not a primary or even a secondary source, as it just quotes an Italian almanac (Calendario Atlante de Agostini 1997, Novara, Instituto Geográfico de Agostino, 1996, p. 315, that gives, without sources, 3% of the population speaking Spanish). To this the Cervantes Institute adds 689.000 speakers of Chavacano (not Spanish proper, but a Spanish creole, spoken mostly in Zamboanga City and in the provinces of Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga del Norte, and Basilan. It is also spoken in some areas of Cavite, Davao, and Cotabato), according to data from A. Quilis (La lengua española en cuatro mundos, Madrid, Mapfre, 1992, p. 82), without specifying if in the first estimate these Chavacano speakers were already counted or not (thus raising the total figure to 2.450.000). The Cervantes site does state that these estimate contradict the Census. One should also notice that English is an official language in the Philippines, unlike Spanish (see The Official Website of the Republic of the Philippines). Today Spanish is offered as a foreign language in Philippines schools and universities.
Africa
In Africa, Spanish is official in
Equatorial Guinea (co-official
French and
Portuguese). Today, in
Western Sahara, nearly 200,000 refugee Sahrawis are able to read and write in Spanish,
[El refuerzo del español llega a los saharauis con una escuela en los campos de Tinduf] and several thousands have received
university education in foreign countries as part of aid packages (mainly
Cuba and
Spain). In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when counting native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people), while
Fang is the most spoken language by a number of native speakers.
[Ethnologue – Equatorial Guinea ((2000)][CIA World Factbook – Equatorial Guinea (Last updated 20 September 2007)] It is also spoken in the Spanish cities in
continental North Africa (
Ceuta and
Melilla) and in the autonomous community of
Canary Islands (143,000 and 1,995,833 people, respectively). Within Northern Morocco, a former
Franco-Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish.
[Morocco.com, The Languages of Morocco.] It is spoken by some communities of
Angola, because of the Cuban influence from the
Cold War, and in
Nigeria by the descendants of
Afro-Cuban ex-slaves. In
Côte d'Ivoire and
Senegal, Spanish can be learned as a second foreign language in the public education system.
[El idioma español en África subsahariana] In 2008,
Cervantes Institutes centers will be opened in
Lagos and
Johannesburg, the first one in the
Sub-Saharan Africa.
[El Cervantes espera duplicar las matrículas para el 2012 dentro de la 'gran operación de comunicación' del español]
Oceania
Among the countries and territories in
Oceania, Spanish is also spoken in
Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. According to the 2001 census, there are approximately 95,000 speakers of Spanish in Australia, 44,000 of which live in Greater Sydney , where the older
Mexican,
Colombian,
Spanish, and
Chilean populations and newer
Argentine,
Salvadoran and
Uruguayan communities live.
The U.S. Territories of
Guam,
Palau,
Northern Marianas, and the independent associated U.S. Territory of
Marshall Islands and
Federated States of Micronesia all once had Spanish speakers, since
Marianas and
Caroline Islands were Spanish colonial possessions until late 19th century (see
Spanish-American War), but Spanish has since been forgotten. It now only exists as an influence on the local native languages and spoken by
Hispanic American resident populations.
Dialectal variation
There are important variations among the regions of Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking America. In some countries in Hispanophone America, it is preferable to use the word
castellano to distinguish their version of the language from that of Spain
, thus asserting their autonomy and national identity. In Spain, the
Castilian dialect's pronunciation is commonly regarded as the national standard, although a use of slightly different pronouns called
laísmo
of this dialect is deprecated. More accurately, for nearly everyone in Spain, "standard Spanish" means, "pronouncing everything exactly as it is written," an ideal which does not correspond to any real dialect, though the northern dialects are the closest to it. In practice, the standard way of speaking Spanish in the media is "written Spanish" for formal speech, "Madrid dialect" (one of the transitional variants between Castilian and
Andalusian) for informal speech.
Voseo
Spanish has three
second-person singular pronouns: , , and (the use of this pronoun and/or its verb forms is called ).
[
- Paises voseantes.png|thumb|right|300px|Countries that feature , in blue. The deeper the blue is, the more predominant is. Countries where is a regionalism are in green; countries without are in red.]]
Grammar
is the subject form say and the term of preposition (
a vos digo)
you I say, while "os" is the form of the direct complement
saw you (all) and of the indirect complement without the preposition
say to you (all).
[buscon.rae.es/dpdI/]
The verb always goes in the
second-person plural even though we addressed only one speaker:
.
Like the possesive employs the form : . The adjectives referred to the person or people to whom we address have established the correspondent agreement in gender and number: .
The more commonly known American dialectal form of voseo uses the pronominal or verbal forms of the
second-person plural (or derivatives of these) to address only one speaker. This is appropriate to distinct regional or social varieties of American Spanish and on the contrary the reverential , which implies closeness and familiarity.
The employs the use of as a pronoun to replace and , which are
second-person singular informal.
- As a subject employs: instead of
- As a vocative: instead of
- As a term of preposition: instead of
- And as a term of comparison: instead of
However, for the (that which uses the pronominal verbs and its complements without preposition) and for the posessive, they employ the forms of , respectively: In other words, in the previous examples the authors conjugate the pronoun subject with the pronominal verbs and its complements of .
The verbal consists of the use of the second person plural, more or less modified, for the conjugated forms of the second person singular: or . The verbal paradigm of is characterized by its complexity. On when hand, it affects, to a distinct extent, each verbal tense and, on the other hand, it varies in functions of geographic and social factors and not all the forms are accepted in cultured norms.
Extension of Voseo in Latin America
is used extensively as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of in the following areas:
almost all of
Mexico,
the West Indies,
the majority of
Peru and
Venezuela, and;
the Atlantic cost of
Colombia.
They alternate as a cultured form and as a popular or rural form in:
Bolivia,
north and south of
Peru,
Ecuador,
small zones of the Venezuelan Andes,
a great part of
Colombia,
Panama, and;
the oriental border of
Cuba.
exists as an intermediate formality of treatment and as a familiar treatment in:
Chile,
the Venezuelan state of
Zulia,
the Pacific coast of
Colombia,
Central America, and;
the Mexican states of
Tabasco and
Chiapas.
Areas of generalized include Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Ustedes
Spanish forms also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. The Spanish dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural for daily use, (formal or familiar, as the case may be, though non-formal usage can sometimes appear in poetry and rhetorical or literary style). In Spain there are two forms — (formal) and (familiar). The pronoun is the plural form of in most of Spain, but in the Americas (and certain southern Spanish cities such as
Cádiz or
Seville, and in the
Canary Islands) it is replaced with . It is notable that the use of for the informal plural "you" in southern Spain does not follow the usual rule for pronoun–verb
agreement; e.g., while the formal form for "you go", , uses the third-person plural form of the verb, in Cádiz or Seville the informal form is constructed as , using the second-person plural of the verb. In the Canary Islands, though, the usual pronoun–verb agreement is preserved in most cases.
Vocabulary
Some words can be different, even embarrassingly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognise specifically American usages. For example, Spanish
mantequilla,
aguacate and
albaricoque (respectively, "butter", "avocado", "apricot") correspond to
manteca,
palta, and
damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words
coger (to catch, get, or pick up),
pisar (to step on) and
concha (seashell) are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of
coger and
pisar is also "to have sex" and
concha means "vulva". The Puerto Rican word for "bobby pin" (
pinche) is an obscenity in Mexico, and in
Nicaragua simply means "stingy". Other examples include
taco, which means "swearword" (among other meanings) in Spain but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish.
Pija in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is an obscene slang word for "penis", while in
Spain the word also signifies "posh girl" or "snobby".
Coche, which means "car" in Spain, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means "baby-stroller", in Guatemala it means "pig", while
carro means "car" in some Latin American countries and "cart" in others, as well as in Spain. Papaya is the slang term in Cuba for vagina therefore in Cuba when referring to the actual fruit Cubans call it fruita bomba instead.
[cuban-food-usa.com/terms/fruta-bomba.html][www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=papaya&defid=151242]
Real Academia
The (Royal Spanish Academy), together with the 21 other national ones (see
Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Due to this influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (
Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.
Classification and related languages
Spanish is closely related to the other
West Iberian Romance languages:
Asturian,
Galician,
Ladino,
Leonese and
Portuguese. Catalan, an
East Iberian language which exhibits many
Gallo-Romance traits, is more similar to the neighboring
Occitan language than to Spanish, or indeed than Spanish and Portuguese are to each other.
Spanish and Portuguese share similar grammars and vocabulary as well as a common history of
Arabic influence while a great part of the peninsula was under
Islamic rule (both languages expanded over
Islamic territories). Their
lexical similarity has been estimated as 89%.
See
Differences between Spanish and Portuguese for further information.
Judaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino), which is essentially medieval Spanish and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the
Sephardi Jews who were
expelled from Spain in the 15th century. Ladino speakers are currently almost exclusively
Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans: current speakers mostly live in Israel and Turkey, with a few pockets in Latin America. It lacks the
Native American vocabulary which was influential during the
Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Castilian, including vocabulary from
Hebrew, some French, Greek and
Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.
Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly
olim (immigrants to
Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.
A related dialect is
Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.
Vocabulary comparison
Spanish and
Italian share a very similar phonological system. At present, the
lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%.
As a result, Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible to various degrees. The lexical similarity with
Portuguese is greater, 89%, but the vagaries of Portuguese pronunciation make it less easily understood by Hispanophones than Italian is.
Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and
French or
Romanian is even lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71%
): comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is as low as an estimated 45% – the same as of English. The common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.
also ()
|
also (sinistra)(archaically also )
|
|
|
|
| left hand
|
or
(lit. "no thing born")
|
| /
|
(archaically also )
|
| /
| /
|
| nothing
|
1. also in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads)
2. in Southern Italian dialects and languages
3. Alternatively
History
[
of Lay of the Cid.jpg|thumb|A page of , in medieval Castilian.]]
Spanish evolved from Vulgar Latin, with major
influences from Arabic in vocabulary during the
Andalusian period
and minor surviving influences from
Basque and
Celtiberian, as well as
Germanic languages via the
Visigoths. Spanish developed along the remote cross road strips among the
Alava,
Cantabria,
Burgos,
Soria and
La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain (see
Glosas Emilianenses), as a strongly innovative and differing variant from its nearest cousin,
Leonese, with a higher degree of Basque influence in these regions (see
Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical
phonology include
lenition (Latin , Spanish ),
palatalization (Latin , Spanish , and Latin , Spanish ) and
diphthongation (
stem-changing) of short
e and
o from Vulgar Latin (Latin , Spanish ; Latin , Spanish ). Similar phenomena can be found in other Romance languages as well.
During the , this northern dialect from
Cantabria was carried south, and remains a
minority language in the northern coastal
Morocco.
The first Latin-to-Spanish grammar () was written in
Salamanca, Spain, in 1492, by
Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When it was presented to
Isabel de Castilla, she asked, "What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?", to which he replied, "Your highness, the language is the instrument of the Empire."
From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the
Americas and the
Spanish East Indies via
Spanish colonization.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to
Equatorial Guinea and the
Western Sahara, and in areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as in
Spanish Harlem, in
New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see
Influences on the Spanish language.
Characterization
A defining feature of Spanish was the
diphthongization of the Latin short vowels
e and
o into
ie and
ue, respectively, when they were stressed. Similar
sound changes are found in other Romance languages, but in Spanish, they were significant. Some examples:
- Lat. > Sp. , It. , Fr. , Rom. , Port./Gal. "stone".
- Lat. > Sp. , It. , Fr. / , Rom. , Port./Gal. "die".
Peculiar to early Spanish (as in the
Gascon dialect of Occitan, and possibly due to a Basque
substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial
f- into
h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongate. Compare for instance:
- Lat. > It. , Port. , Gal. , Fr. , Occitan (but Gascon ) Sp. (but Ladino );
- Lat. > Lad. , Port./Gal. , Sp. ;
- but Lat. > It. , Port./Gal. , Sp./Lad. .
Some
consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, for example:
- Lat. , acc. , > Lad. , , ; Sp. , , . However, in Spanish there are also the forms , , ; Port. , , ; Gal. , , .
- Lat. acc. , , > Lad. , , ; Sp. , , ; Port. , , ; Gal. , , .
Writing system
Spanish
Spanish is written using the
Latin alphabet, with the addition of the character
ñ (
eñe, representing the phoneme , a letter distinct from
n, although typographically composed of an
n with a
tilde) and the
digraphs
ch (, representing the phoneme ) and
ll (, representing the phoneme ). However, the digraph
rr (, "strong
r", , "double
r", or simply ), which also represents a distinct phoneme , is not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994, the digraphs
ch and
ll are to be treated as letter pairs for
collation purposes, though they remain a part of the alphabet. Words with
ch are now alphabetically sorted between those with
ce and
ci, instead of following
cz as they used to, and similarly for
ll.
[Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas, 1st ed.: "[...] en el X Congreso de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, celebrado en 1994, se acordó adoptar el orden alfabético latino universal, en el que la ch y la ll no se consideran letras independientes. En consecuencia, las palabras que comienzan por estas dos letras, o que las contienen, pasan a alfabetizarse en los lugares que les corresponden dentro de la c y de la l, respectivamente. Esta reforma afecta únicamente al proceso de ordenación alfabética de las palabras, no a la composición del abecedario, del que los dígrafos ch y ll siguen formando parte."]["No obstante, en el X Congreso de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, celebrado en 1994, se acordó adoptar para los diccionarios académicos, a petición de varios organismos internacionales, el orden alfabético latino universal, en el que la ch y la ll no se consideran letras independientes. En consecuencia, estas dos letras pasan a alfabetizarse en los lugares que les corresponden dentro de la C (entre -cg- y -ci-) y dentro de la L (entre -lk- y -lm-), respectivamente." Real Academia Española, Explanation at http://www.spanishpronto.com/ (in Spanish and English)]
Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 29 letters:
a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as
México (see
Toponymy of Mexico) and some neologisms like
software, pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. A typical Spanish word is stressed on the
syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including
y) or with a vowel followed by
n or
s; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an
acute accent on the
stressed vowel.
The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain
homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a
clitic: compare ("the", masculine singular definite article) with ("he" or "it"), or ("you", object pronoun), (preposition "of" or "from"), and (reflexive pronoun) with ("tea"), ("give") and ("I know", or imperative "be").
The interrogative pronouns (, , , , etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (, , , etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. The conjunction ("or") is written with an accent between numerals so as not to be confused with a zero: e.g., should be read as rather than ("10,020"). Accent marks are frequently omitted in capital letters (a widespread practice in the early days of computers where only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the
RAE advises against this.
When
u is written between
g and a front vowel (
e or
i), if it should be pronounced, it is written with a
diaeresis (
ü) to indicate that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g.,
cigüeña, "stork", is pronounced ; if it were written
cigueña, it would be pronounced .
Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with
inverted question ( ¿ ) and exclamation ( ¡ ) marks.
Sounds
The phonemic inventory listed in the following table includes
phonemes that are preserved only in some dialects, other dialects having merged them (such as
yeísmo); these are marked with an asterisk (*). Sounds in parentheses are
allophones.
By the 16th century, the consonant system of Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from
neighboring Romance languages such as
Portuguese and
Catalan:
- Initial , when it had evolved into a vacillating , was lost in most words (although this etymological h- is preserved in spelling and in some Andalusian dialects is still aspirated).
- The bilabial approximant (which was written u or v) merged with the bilabial occlusive (written b). There is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v in contemporary Spanish, excepting emphatic pronunciations that cannot be considered standard or natural.
- The voiced alveolar fricative which existed as a separate phoneme in medieval Spanish merged with its voiceless counterpart . The phoneme which resulted from this merger is currently spelled s.
- The voiced postalveolar fricative merged with its voiceless counterpart , which evolved into the modern velar sound by the 17th century, now written with j, or g before e, i. Nevertheless, in most parts of Argentina and in Uruguay, y and ll have both evolved to or .
- The voiced alveolar affricate merged with its voiceless counterpart , which then developed into the interdental , now written z, or c before e, i. But in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and the Americas this sound merged with as well. See Ceceo, for further information.
The consonant system of Medieval Spanish has been better preserved in
Ladino and in Portuguese, neither of which underwent these shifts.
Lexical stress
Spanish is a
syllable-timed language, so each syllable has the same duration regardless of stress.
Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth last. The
tendencies of stress assignment are as follows:
- In words ending in vowels, , and , stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.
- In words ending in all other consonants, the stress more often falls on the ultimate syllable.
- Preantepenultimate stress occurs rarely and only in words like guardándoselos ('saving them for him/her') where a clitic follows certain verbal forms.
- When placing direct and indirect objects on the end of a verb, the purpose of the accent is to help the verb maintain its original sound. (If the above rules are confusing about when and where to place the accent, place your fist underneath your chin. Say the word out loud. The spot, in the word, where your chin pushes your fist down is where the accent goes.)
In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous
minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress. For example,
sabana, with penultimate stress, means 'savannah' while
, with antepenultimate stress, means 'sheet';
('boundary'),
('
[1] he/she limits') and
('I limited') also contrast solely on stress.
An amusing example of the significance of intonation in Spanish is the phrase
("What do you mean / 'how / do I eat'? / I eat / the way / I eat!").
Grammar
Spanish is a relatively
inflected language, with a two-
gender system and about fifty
conjugated forms per
verb, but limited inflection of
nouns,
adjectives, and
determiners. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see
Spanish verbs and
Spanish irregular verbs.)
It is
right-branching, uses
prepositions, and usually, though not always, places
adjectives after
nouns. Its
syntax is generally
Subject Verb Object, though variations are common. It is a
pro-drop language (allows the deletion of pronouns when pragmatically unnecessary) and
verb-framed.
Samples
| English |
| Spanish |
IPA phonemic transcription
(abstract phonemes) 1 |
IPA phonetic transcription
(actual sounds) 2 |
Spanish
|
|
|
|
(Castilian) Spanish
|
|
|
|
English
|
| 3
|
|
Yes
|
|
|
|
| No | | |
|
| Hello | | |
|
| How are you? | (informal)
(formal)
|
|
|
Good morning
|
|
|
|
Good afternoon/evening
|
| 3
|
|
Good night
|
|
|
|
Goodbye
|
|
|
|
| Please | | 3 |
|
Thank you
|
| 3
3
|
|
Excuse me
|
| 3
|
|
I am sorry
|
| 3
|
|
Hurry! (informal)
|
| 3
|
|
| Because | | 3 |
|
| Why? | | 3 |
|
Who?
|
| 3
|
|
| What? | | |
|
| When? | | 3 |
|
| Where? | | 3 |
|
| How? | | |
|
| How much? | | 3 |
|
| I do not understand | | 3 |
|
Help me (please) (formal)
Help me! (informal)
| | |
|
Where is the bathroom?
|
| 3
|
|
Do you speak English? (informal)
|
| 3
|
|
Cheers! (toast)
|
|
|
|
1 Phonemic representation of the abstract phonological entities (phonemes), 2 phonetic representation of the actual sounds pronounced (phones). In both cases, when several representations are given, the first one corresponds to the dialect in the recording (Castilian with yeísmo) and the rest to several other dialects not in the recording.
3 Capital and (non-standard IPA) are used here to represent the nasal and rhotic archiphonemes that neutralize the phonemic oppositions and , respectively, in syllabe coda and intra-cluster positions.
See also
col-start
col-2
col-2
col-end
