Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian (in its own language: español, castellano) is one of the Romance languages. It began as a variety of Latin in what is now northern Spain, and has since become one of the world's most widely-spoken languages. Its is nowadays the first spoken language and the state language of Spain, as well as of a majority of american countries which are, from north to south, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. In most of these countries, however, Spanish coexists with several minority languages. Spanish is also used by an important part of the population of the United States, has an official status in Equatorial Guinea and enjoys some diffusion in the Philippines, in Morocco and in Western Sahara.

Spanish is closely related to the following Romance languages:

• Asturian-Leonese (asturllionés)
• Galician-Portuguese (galegoportuguês)
• Aragonese (aragonés, fabla)
• Catalan (català)
• Occitan (occitan)

Ladino (djudeo-espanyol, sefardí) is a Spanish dialect.

Phonology

Due to a Basque substratum (which can also occur in the Gascon dialect of Occitan), but in all positions, Latin initial f- mutated into h- before a non-diphthongised vowel.

Writing system

Letters

Spanish uses a variant of the Roman alphabet containing twenty-seven letters, that is, the typical twenty-six letters plus Ñ:

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 Z

Between 1754 and 2010, the graphemes CH and LL were considered as letters of the alphabet, CH being located after C and LL after L. For instance, cuyo with c (“whose”) was followed by chacal with ch (“jackal”). In 1994, CH and LL were still considered as letters but had to respect the typical, international, alphabetical order, that is, chacal was set before cuyo. In 2010, CH and LL were no longer considered as letters.

The letters bear the following names:

A (a), B (be), C (ce), D (de), E (e), F (efe), G (ge), H (hache), I (i), J (jota), K (ka), L (ele), M (eme), N (ene), Ñ (eñe), O (o), P (pe), Q (cu), R (erre), S (ese), T (te), U (u), V (uve, ve), W (uve doble, doble ve), X (equis), Y (ye, i griega), Z (zeta).

The two graphemes which are no longer letters still bear letter names: CH (che), LL (elle).

Diacritics

The Spanish diacritic marks are:

• The acute accent on á, é, í, ó, ú.
• The tilde on ñ.
• The dieresis on ü, but only used in the grapheme gü.

Pronunciation rules

Spanish spelling is quite simple and easy to learn, since each grapheme has to be read in a precise way and most phonemes can be represented by only one grapheme. Exceptions exist but are few.

Here are the main, standard pronunciation rules:

• a, á = [a]
• b = [β~b] (variation depending on the nearby phonemes)
• c
  • = [k] in general
  • = [θ] before e, i (also [s] in some regional standards)
• ch = [tʃ]
• d = [ð~d] (variation depending on the nearby phonemes)
• e, é = [e]
• f = [f]
• g
  • = [ɣ~g] (variation depending on the nearby phonemes)
  • = [x] before e, i
• gu
  • = [ɣ~g] before e, i (variation depending on the previous phoneme)
  • = [ɣw~gw] before a, o (variation depending on the previous phoneme)
  • = [ɣu~gu] at syllable ending (variation depending on the previous phoneme)
• gü = [ɣw~gw] before e, i (variation depending on the previous phoneme)
• h = mute
• i
  • = [i]
  • = [j], especially after or before another vowel
• í = [i]
• j = [x]
• k = [k]
• l = [l]
• ll = [ʎ] (also [j], widely accepted nowadays)
• m = [m]
• n = [n]
• ñ = [ɲ]
• o, ó = [o]
• p = [p]
• qu = [k] (only written before e, i)
• r
  • = short [r] (also transcribed [ɾ])
  • = long [rr] (also transcribed [r]) at word beginning and after n
• rr = long [rr] (also transcribed [r]) (only written between two vowels)
• s = [s] (never [z])
• t = [t]
• u
  • = [u]
  • = [w], especially after or before another vowel
• ú = [u]
• v = [β~b] (variation depending on the nearby phonemes)
• w
  • = [β~b] (variation depending on the nearby phonemes)
  • = [w]
• x
  • = [ks]
  • = [x] in some proper names such as México, Oaxaca
• y
  • = [j]
  • = [i] when isolated in the single-letter word y “and”
• z = [θ] (also [s] in some regional standards)

One can notice that, sometimes, a same sound (or a same sound sequence) is written in different ways, depending on its environment:

• [θ] is written z in general, but nearly always c before e, i.
• [x] is written j in general, but often g before e, i.
• [k] is written c in general, but qu before e, i (it also may be noted k in a few words).
• [ɣ~g] is written g in general, but gu before e, i.
• [ɣw~gw] is written gu before a, o, but gü before e, i.
• long [rr] is written rr between two vowels but r at word beginning and after n.

The stress falls:

• On the last but one syllable, in words ended by -a, -e, -i, -o, -u, -as, -es, -is, -os, -us, -an, -en, -in, -on, -un: bueno “good”, buenos “good (plural)”, habla “he/she talks”, hablan “they talk”.
• On the last syllable, in words that have other endings: añadir “to add”, español “Spanish”, Uruguay “Uruguay”.
• On any vowel that bears a written, acute accent (this written accent often indicates that the stress is not located in a regular place): café “coffee”, inglés “English”, común “common”, nación “nation”, catálogo “catalog”, política “politics”.
• Words ended by -io, -ia are stressed on the previous syllable (necesario, necesaria “necesary”, justicia “justice”), unless an acute accent indicates another place (rocío “dew”, policía “police”).

Punctuation

An typical feature of Spanish puntuation is the visible limits of questions and exclamations, that one frames between double questions marks (¿...?) and double exclamation marks (¡...!), the first mark being inverted:

¿Que tal? “What's up?”

¡Bueno! “Well”

Quotation marks have the following shapes: «...» or “...” (more rarely: ‘...’).

Spanish around the world

The Philippines

In 2007, the Instituto Cervantes in Manila requested of the Philippine government to reinstate the status of Spanish as an official language, prior to current president's Gloria Arroyo's state visit to Spain in December 2007.

See also

• Romance languages
• Rioplatense Spanish