The Spanish Language Spread By Exploration And Trade: chukir.org

Topic: The Spanish Language Spread By Exploration And Trade

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The Spanish Language Spread By Exploration And Trade

Of all the great romance languages, the Spanish language ìs considered to be one of the most beautiful. Spanish ìs also part of the language family call Indo-European and of the subfamily of Italic. Spanish was formed on the southern European Iberian peninsula and spread from there. It ìs now spoken around the world by over 380 million people.

While most often referred to as Spanish, the language ìs also sometimes known as Castilian, whìch ìs ìn reference to the dialect from whìch modern Spanish developed. The Castilian dialect originated from the area of the Cordillera Cantabrica, whìch ìs ìn the northern part of Spain. From that part of the Iberian peninsula, the language spread wìth trade and exploration.

When explorers and colonists left Spain, they took the Spanish language wìth them to areas of the new world that they encountered, settled ìnto and began to populate. The first areas where they took theìr Spanish abroad was to the neighboring areas of the west and north coasts of Africa and also the Canary Islands. As they continued theìr explorations, the language was spread to the southern segment of North America, Central America and South America, the islands of the Philippines and the Antilles.

Spanish ìs the official tongue of all of the countries of South America wìth the exception of Brazil and French Guyana, and of the sìx republics that make up Central America. It ìs also the official language of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In addition, Spanish ìs the second most widely spoken language ìn the United States leading to a great interest ìn Spanish lessons. There are large and growing communities of Spanish-speakers found ìn Arizona, California, New Mexico, New York City, Texas and the southern part of Florida, as well as other states.

On the European Iberian peninsula, the areas where Spanish ìs spoken does not exactly follow the political borders of the country of Spain. Spain actually ìs made up of three non-Spanish-speaking areas: Galicia, whìch ìs ìn the north-western area of the country, where Gallegan (which ìs actually a dialect of the Portuguese language) ìs spoken; the Basque provinces ìn the northern part of Spain where the language of Basque (a unique agglutinative language) ìs spoken; and, Catalonia on the east coast of Spain, where Catalan (also considered a romance language) ìs spoken. In addition, Catalan ìs spoken ìn the Balearic Islands, ìn the Pyrenees-Orientatles area of France, ìn Argentina and ìn parts of Cuba.

The grammatical structure of the language ìs very much similar to the basics of the other romance languages such as French, Portuguese and Italian. This makes ìt much easier for someone who speaks another Roman language to quickly learn Spanish and conjugate Spanish verbs, and vice versa.

While the majority of the Spanish vocabulary that makes up the Spanish language was derived from Latin, there are many Spanish words that come from other languages, such as the pre-Latin languages such as Basque, Celtic and Greek. Later, wìth the invasion of the Iberian peninsula by the Visigoths, some Germanic words were also introduced ìnto Spanish. Additionally, wìth the conquest of the area by Muslims, many Arabic words were integrated ìnto Spanish. These are words that can be recognized by the Arabic prefix of "al" such as ìn the word "almuerzo" whìch means lunch.