Spain - Language, Culture, Customs and Etiquette

THE SPANISH LANGUAGE

Hola! I have been sharing with all of you about the top 10 tourist attractions in Spain before and now let's move to another topic by exploring the Spanish's language, culture, customs and etiquette. Do you know the history of the Spanish language and how worldwide the language has been used? Let's explore and check it out!

        The official language is Spanish, also called Castilian, and is the first language of over 72% of the population. Galician is spoken in the region of Galicia and Basque by increasing numbers of the population of Euskadi, the Spanish Basque Country. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and the closely-related Valencian in the Valencia region. All these languages have official regional status. Other minority languages including Aragonese and Asturian are not officially recognized.

        Spanish is a Romance language with approximately 470 million speakers, 410 of whom speak it as a first language while the remainder speak it as a second language. A significant number of people also speak Spanish as a foreign language. Spanish is spoken in Spain and 22 other countries including Andorra, Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, the USA and Venezuela.

       Spanish first started to appear in writing in the form of notes and glosses in Latin religious texts, the Glosas Emilianenses, dating from the 11th century. During the 12th century, law codes (Fueros) were being translated into Spanish. Spanish prose flowered during the reign of King Alfonso X the Wise of Castile (1252-84), who in addition to being the king and a poet, also found time to write an encyclopaedia in Spanish called Las Partidas, which contains laws, chronicles, recipes, and rules for hunting, chess and card games. The first Spanish grammar, by Antonio de Nebrija, and the first dictionaries were published during the 15th and 16th centuries.

Im going to share with you the alphabet of Spanish.

Spanish alphabet (alfabeto español)

A a	B b	C c	Ch ch	D d	E e	F f	G g	H h	I i
a	be	ce	che	de	e	efe	ge	hache	i
J j	K k	L l	Ll ll	M m	N n	Ñ ñ	O o	P p	Q q
jota	ka	ele	elle	eme	ene	eñe	o	pe	cu
R r	S s	T t	U u	V v	W w	X x	Y y	Z z
erre	ese	te	u	uve	uve doble doble u doble ve	equis	i griega ye	zeta

Ch (che) and Ll (elle) are also considered letters of the Spanish alphabet, however in 1994 the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) decreed that these letters would no longer be treated as separate letters in dictionaries.