Portál španělského jazyka

History

The Spanish language was developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Basque and Arabic, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of breve E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo); similar phenomena can be found in most Romance languages as well.

During the Reconquista, this northern dialect was carried south, and indeed is still a minority language in northern Morocco.

The language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by Spanish colonization, beginning in the 16th century.

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara.

Geographic distribution

In the United States, Spanish is spoken by some three-quarters of its over 40 million Hispanic population. It is also being learned and spoken by a small, though slowly growing, proportion of its non-Hispanic population for its increasing use in business, commerce, and both domestic and international politics. Spanish does hold co-official status in the state of New Mexico, and in the unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. See Spanish in the United States for further information.

In Brazil, where virtually the whole population speaks Portuguese, Spanish is obtaining an important status as a second or third language (after English) among young students and some skilled professionals. The close genetic relationship between the two languages - along with the fact that Spanish is the dominant and official language of almost every country that borders Brazil - adds to the popularity. Ladino (Judæo-Spanish) may also be spoken natively by some Brazilian Sephardim who have maintained it as the language of the home.

Spanish is also spoken in Aruba (both standard Spanish and Papiamento), Canada, Israel (both standard Spanish and the Judæo-Spanish of the Sephardim, also known as Ladino), northern Morocco (both standard Spanish and Ladino), Netherlands Antilles (both standard Spanish and Papiamento), Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey (Ladino), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Western Sahara.

It is spoken by much of the population of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar (which is also claimed by Spain), though English remains the most widely used and only official language. Yanito, an English-Spanish mixed language is also spoken.

It is an important and widely-spoken language, but without official recognition, in Andorra and Belize.

The majority of its speakers are confined to the Western Hemisphere. With close to 100 million first-language and second-language speakers, Mexico boasts the largest population of Spanish-speakers in the world. The four next largest populations reside in Colombia (44 million), Spain (c. 41 million), Argentina (39 million) and the United States of America (c. 30 million).

In Europe, secondary populations inhabit Andorra and Gibraltar. There is emigrants in Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

In Africa, Spanish is spoken in Canary Islands, Ceuta, Equatorial Guinea, Melilla, Nothern Morocco and Western Sahara.

In Asia, it is now spoken by less than 0.01% of the population in the Philippines: 2,658 speakers (1990 Census). Furthermore, the sole existing Spanish-Asiatic creole language, Chabacano, is spoken by 292,630 (1990 census) Filipinos. The speakers are mainly confined to various regions on island of Mindanao and a region south of Manila on the island of Luzon, with some speakers in Sabah, Malaysia. Most other native Philippine languages contain generous quantities of Spanish loan words.

In addition to the Philippines, it may also be spoken in other Asian countries with no official status. Such instances include Israel (100,000 to 160,000) and Turkey (20.000-30.000). There is some emigrants in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Mexican-born Chinese deported to China, and third or fourth generation ethnic Japanese Peruvians returning to their ancestral homeland of Japan, now much more prosperous than when their forebears emigrated.

The only place in Oceania where Spanish is official is Easter Island (Chile), spoken by all of the approx. 3,000 inhabitants. There is a significant number of Spanish speakers in Australia, too. The Pacific Island nations of Guam, Micronesia, Palau, Northern Marianas, and Marshall Islands all once had Spanish speakers, but Spanish has long since been forgotten, and now only exists as an influence on the local native languages, as chamorro.

Argentina, Chile, Spain and Peru have bases in the Antartic.