| Spanish Language |
Article Index for Spanish |
Articles about Spanish Language |
Website Links For Spanish Language |
Information AboutSpanish Language |
|
Please DO NOT add or delete information in this infobox before discussing on the talk page. Thank you! Spanish () or '''Castilian''' (''castellano'') is a Romance Language originally from the northern area of Spain . It is the Official Language of Spain , most Latin American countries, and one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea , in Africa . In total, twenty-five nations and territories use Spanish as their primary language. It is one of Six Official Languages of the United Nations . Spanish originated as a Dialect of Latin along the remote cross road strips among the Cantabria , Burgos , Soria and La Rioja provinces of Northern Spain. From there, its use gradually spread inside the Kingdom of Castile , where it evolved and eventually became the principal language of the government and trade. It was later taken to the Americas and other parts of the world in the last five centuries by Spanish explorers and colonists. The language is spoken by between 322 and 400 million people natively, Universidad de México Instituto Cervantes ( "El Mundo" news ) making Spanish the most spoken Romance language and possibly the second most spoken language by number of native speakers. Ethnologue, 1999 CIA World Factbook , Field Listing - Languages (World). It is estimated that the combined total of native and non-native Spanish speakers is approximately 500 million, likely making it the fourth most spoken language by total number of speakers. Universidad de México Instituto Cervantes ( "El Mundo" news ). The language is spoken most extensively in the schools and Universities., Statistical Abstract of the United States: page 47: Table 47: Languages Spoken at Home by Language: 2003, MLA Fall 2002. NAMING AND ORIGIN See Also: Names given to the Spanish language Spaniards tend to call this language (Spanish) when contrasting it with languages of foreign 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 America n 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 follow: : :Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (…) The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities… Some philologists use " Castilian " only when speaking of the language spoken in Castile during the Middle Ages , stating that it is preferable to use "Spanish" for its modern form. The Subdialect of Spanish spoken in northern parts of modern day Castile is also called "Castilian" sometimes. This dialect differs from those of other regions of Spain ( Andalusia or Madrid for example); the Castilian dialect is conventionally considered in Spain to be the same as Standard Spanish . The name ''castellano'' is however widely used for the language as a whole in Latin America. Some Spanish speakers consider '''' a generic term with no political or ideological links, much as "Spanish" is in English. Often Latin Americans use it to differentiate their own variety of Spanish as opposed to the variety of Spanish spoken in Spain, or vice-versa, to refer to that variety of Spanish which is considered as standard in this one. | ||
| { Class | "wikitable" |
|
| :{ Class | "wikitable" |
|
| :{ Class | "wikitable" |
|
| { Class | "wikitable" style="font-family: Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode" |
|
|