A short story about Spanish language

Around 442 million native speakers speak Spanish in the world, and 550 million if we consider students and speakers with some ability to communicate. With a presence in the 5 continents, and one of the most spoken languages in the world. Study Spanish is not just for academic purposes like read The Quixote of La Mancha. Is a language in vogue nowadays, with many turistic places to visit.

Presence of Spanish around the world. Source Wikipedia.

But before all that. Where it comes from?

The word Español or Spanish comes from the old Latin word Hispania and it means "Land of rabbits". Name given by the Roman Empire to a territory now known as Spain. The spoken Latin influenced the local languages in grammar, syntaxis, and vocabulary their new annexed provinces, so after their fall, new languages emerged not too different each other, known as Romance languages. But this not applies to German and English were belongs to another  branch. That is the reason due to an Italian, French, Portuguese or Spanish native speaker can understand at some level the other languages.

Spanish and Castilian are usually used as synonymous. Actually, is just one of many,  but were chosen one as the official language. Since X Century, Kingdom of Castilla started to get influence over the rest of the Iberian peninsula. Castillian spread over the rest of the territory. Dialects from other kingdoms were getting relegated to a low profile, and Mozarabic language was expelled from there. However, almost 4000 words in modern Spanish have a Mozarabic origin.

Expansion of Castilian in Iberian peninsula. Source Wikipedia.

A frequent question is, which version of Spanish should I choose for learning. Well, honestly this will depend concerning their purposes to do that.  In written Spanish, are no big differences, but concerning slang, accent, and daily life, s better train your ears with local TV. So, Which do you will choose for your next holidays?

A viajar se ha dicho. Hasta la próxima. Nos vemos.