Portál španělského jazyka

Classification

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.

Variations

There are important variations in dialect among the various regions of Spain and Spanish-speaking America. In Spain the North Castilian dialect pronunciation is commonly taken as the national standard (although the characteristic weak pronouns usage or laísmo of this dialect is deprecated).

Spanish has three second-person singular pronouns tú, usted, and in some parts of Latin America, vos. Generally speaking, Tú and vos are informal and used with friends (though in Spain "Vos" is considered a highly exalted archaism that is now confined to liturgy). Usted is universally regarded as the formal form, and is used as a mark of respect, as when addressing one's elders.

Vos is used extensively as the primary form of the second-person singular in various countries around Latin America (Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay) but can also be present in other countries as a limited regionalism. Its use, depending on country and region, can be considered the accepted standard or reproached as sub-standard and considered as speech of the ignorant and uneducated. The interpersonal situations in which the employment of vos is acceptable may also also differ considerably between regions.

Spanish dialects also differ regarding second-person plural pronouns. The Spanish dialects of Latin America have only one form of the second-person plural; ustedes (formal/familiar). Meanwhile, Castilian Spanish of Spain has two; ustedes (formal) and vosotros (familiar/informal).

The RAE (Real Academia Española), in association with twenty-one other national language academies, exercises a prudent influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar guides and style guides.