The Spanish language is the national, literary and cultured language of the Spain, of the South American (excluding Brazil and Guianas) and Central American Republics. It has as its base the Castilian dialectal system, and in particular the Toledo dialect, elevated to the official language of Castile with the Toledo edict of 1253. But the other dialectal systems of Spain, namely Aragonese, also fall within the Spanish denomination. and Leonese, which once formed autonomous linguistic units and were spoken over a much larger area than today. In Spain are also spoken languages unrelated to the Ibero-Romance system, namely Catalan, akin to the Provençal languages, and Basque, a non-Indo-European language of the Western Pyrenees and Navarre.
● Castilian has imposed itself on the other dialectal systems of Spain for its literary and cultural prestige, whose origins are the Cantar de mio Cid of the 12th century. and the cultural work of Alfonso X (1221-84); and therefore for the political prestige, especially after the union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon (1469). The Castilian language, which already in the 14th and 15th centuries. had been enriched, disciplined and initiated into a high capacity for artistic expression by the work of writers and theorists such as J. Ruiz and I. López de Mendoza, finds a precise norm in the Gramática sobre la lengua castellana by EA de Nebrija (1492) and from the 16th century. it becomes the language of a great literature, no longer Castilian but Spanish, which culminates in the period of the greatest political power of the Spain with M. de Cervantes’ Don Quijote. In the 16th and 17th centuries. Spanish exercised the function of language of diplomacy and culture in a large part of Western Europe, a function then inherited, in the 18th century, from French. For Spain 2006, please check computergees.com.
● Spanish is identified within the Romance languages for some fundamental characters: in phonetics, the diphthongization of tonic ĕ and ŏ in ie and ue in both open and closed syllables (piedra “stone”, fuego “fire”), the palatalization of the consonant links pl and cl in ll ‹l ‘(llamar, lat. clamare), and of ct in ch‹ č ›(dicho, lat. dictus), the lenition of voiceless intervocalic consonants in voiced and voiced consonants in spirants (vida ‹bìd✂a›, Latin vita), and the frequent disappearance of spirants (oír da audire), the reduction of initial f- to h- except in front of ue, re often also ie (hablar da fabulare, ma fuego, frágil); in morphology, the conservation of the final -s (hombres da homines), the formation of the comparative with más (lat.magis), unlike the Italian and French which continue the Latin plus (it. più bella, fr. plus belle, sp.más hermosa). The lexicon is characterized by the survival of some prelatine Iberian voices (eg, zorra “fox”), by conservation and innovations within the Latin heritage (ave “bird” from avis, comer da comedere, yegua da equa, hermano da germanus, facing avicellus, manducare, caballa, fratellus continued by the other Western Romance languages), by the presence of Germanic terms diffused by the Swabians and especially by the Visigoths, different from the Germanisms of the other Romance languages, and finally by a high percentage of words of Arabic origin, which concern legal and social institutions (alcaide «castellano» and alcalde «podestà», achaque «accusa»), craftsmanship, commerce and agriculture (adobe «brick», azúcar «sugar»), science and technology (azimut, nadir, alquimia).
● In the late Middle Ages, many Portuguese, Galician and Catalan words, as well as Provençal and French words, penetrated the Spanish lexicon, due to the influence exercised by the respective literatures; in the Renaissance, however, the loans from Italian (soneto, carroza, bank) are noteworthy. for the influence exerted by the respective literature; in the Renaissance, however, the loans from Italian (soneto, carroza, bank) are noteworthy. for the influence exerted by the respective literature; in the Renaissance, however, the loans from Italian (soneto, carroza, bank) are noteworthy.
