Spanish Language: A brief introduction

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. 

 http://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/rsaxena/RESOURCES/introduction.htm

List of Academies Associations for standardizing Spanish language

Year	Academy Name	Country
1713	Real Academia Española	Spain
1871	Academia Colombiana de la Lengua	Colombia
1874	Academia Ecuatoriana de la Lengua	Ecuador
1875	Academia Mexicana de la Lengua	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	Academia Panameña de la Lengua	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