Today, Spanish is the world's second most-spoken
language by native speakers (after Mandarin Chinese) and more than 300 million
people speaks Spanish as a first language and as a second language by millions
of people. It is official language of Spain and 20 Latin American nations. In USA it
is the native language of over 15 million people and is one of the official
languages of the UN since inception.
Spanish belongs to the Romance languages and are a
branch of the Indo-European language family. The language originated in
northern Spain
and gradually spread and evolved into the principal language of government and
trade. The Spanish language uses the Roman alphabet, to which the symbols have
been added and vocabulary is basically of Latin origin, although it has been
enriched by many loan/borrowed words from other languages, mainly Arabic, French,
Italian, and various indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America. The oldest in existence written records of
Spanish date from the middle of the 10th century AD.
One of the interesting features of Spanish is that
there are two forms of the verb “ser” and “estar”. Another peculiarity of
Spanish is the use of an inverted question mark (¿) at the beginning of a
question and of an inverted exclamation point (¡) at the beginning of an
exclamation. Orthography accent marks (eg. é ň) used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed
syllable in words. As in any other living
language, Spanish is also characterized by important variations spoken amongst
the regions of Spain as also Spanish-speaking Latin-America. The prime
phonological difference between Castilian accent widely used in Spain, and the
accent of some parts of Andalucía, Spain and all the Latin American accents of
Spanish, is the absence of a voiceless dental fricative (/θ/ as in English
thing) in the latter. The other Spanish variety with the most speakers is
Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by over twenty percent of the Spanish speakers.
The main characteristic of Mexican Spanish is the reduction or loss of the
unstressed vowels.
The standard
Spanish language is also called “Castilian”. Up to the 15th century the
language is customarily called Old Spanish. From the 16th century
(approximately), it is called Modern Spanish. The first steps toward
standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King
Alfonso-X of Castile, known as Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise). He
assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian.
“Antonio de Nebrija” wrote the first grammar of Spanish called "Gramática
de la lengua castellana" and presented it to Queen Isabella in 1492. The Spanish Royal Academy
now known as “Real Academia Española RAE” was founded in 1713 with the
objective of preserving the "purity" of the language. The (“Royal Spanish
Academy”), published its
first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739 and it continues to
produce new editions from time to time. Each of the Spanish-speaking countries
has an analogous language academy and an Association of Spanish Language
Academies was created in 1951 propounds standardizing the language usage
because of influence and for other socio-historical reasons, a standardized
form of the Spanish language is widely acknowledged for use in literature,
academic contexts and the media.
List
of Academies Associations for standardizing Spanish language
Year
|
Academy Name
|
Country
|
1713
|
|
Spain
|
1871
|
|
Colombia
|
1874
|
Academia Ecuatoriana de la Lengua
|
Ecuador
|
1875
|
|
México
|
1876
|
Academia Salvadoreña de la Lengua
|
El Salvador
|
1883
|
Academia Venezolana de la Lengua
|
Venezuela
|
1885
|
Academia Chilena de la Lengua
|
Chile
|
1887
|
Academia Peruana de la Lengua
|
Perú
|
1887
|
Academia Guatemalteca de la Lengua
|
Guatemala
|
1923
|
Academia Costarricense de la
Lengua
|
Costa Rica
|
1924
|
Academia Filipina de la Lengua
Española
|
Philippines
|
1926
|
|
Panamá
|
1926
|
Academia Cubana de la Lengua
|
Cuba
|
1927
|
Academia Paraguaya de la Lengua
Española
|
Paraguay
|
1927
|
Academia Dominicana de la Lengua
|
Dominican Republic
|
1927
|
Academia Boliviana de la Lengua
|
Bolivia
|
1928
|
Academia Nicaragüense de la Lengua
|
Nicaragua
|
1931
|
Academia Argentina de Letras
|
Argentina
|
1943
|
Academia Nacional de Letras, del
Uruguay
|
Uruguay
|
1949
|
Academia Hondureña de la Lengua
|
Honduras
|
1955
|
Academia Puertorriqueña de la
Lengua Española
|
Puerto Rico
|
1973
|
Academia Norteamericana de la
Lengua Española
|
United States
|