Spanish or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 600 million when including second language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico.
Spanish cuisine consists of the traditions and practices of Spanish cooking. It features considerable regional diversity, with significant differences between the traditions of each of Spain's regional cuisines.
The Royal Spanish Academy is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other Hispanophone nations through the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language.
The Spanish language has two names: español and castellano. Spanish speakers from different countries or backgrounds can show a preference for one term or the other, or use them indiscriminately, but political issues or common usage might lead speakers to prefer one term over the other. This article identifies the differences between those terms, the countries or backgrounds that show a preference for one or the other, and the implications the choice of words might have for a native Spanish speaker.
Department of Cundinamarca is one of the departments of Colombia. Its area covers 22,623 square kilometres (8,735 sq mi) and it has a population of 2,919,060 as of 2018. It was created on August 5, 1886, under the constitutional terms presented on the same year. Cundinamarca is located in the center of Colombia.
Spanish omelette or Spanish tortilla is a traditional dish from Spain. It is celebrated as one of the most popular dishes of the Spanish cuisine. It is an omelette made with eggs and potatoes, usually including onion. It is often served at room temperature as a tapa.
The plazas de soberanía are a series of Spanish overseas minor territories scattered along the Mediterranean coast bordering Morocco in Africa, or that are closer to Africa than Europe. This term is used for those territories that have been a part of Spain since the formation of the modern country (1492–1556), as opposed to African territories acquired by Spain during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Scramble for Africa.
The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language is an entity whose end is to work for the unity, integrity, and growth of the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world. The association publishes reference works on the Spanish language and commemorative editions of Hispanic literature, among other publications.
Jamón is a type of dry-cured ham produced in Spain. It is one of the most globally recognized food items of Spanish cuisine. It is also regularly a component of tapas.
Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes; in other words, the pronunciation of a given Spanish-language word can largely be predicted from its spelling and to a slightly lesser extent vice versa. Spanish punctuation uniquely includes the use of inverted question and exclamation marks: ⟨¿⟩⟨¡⟩.
Standard Spanish, also called the norma culta, 'cultivated norm', refers to the standard, or codified, variety of the Spanish language, which most writing and formal speech in Spanish tends to reflect. This standard, like other standard languages, tends to reflect the norms of upper-class, educated speech. There is variation within this standard such that one may speak of the Mexican, Latin American, Peninsular, and Rioplatense standards, in addition to the standard forms developed by international organizations and multinational companies.
Arabic influence on the Spanish language overwhelmingly dates from the Muslim era of the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492. The influence results mainly from the large number of Arabic loanwords and derivations in Spanish, plus a few other less obvious effects.
Portuguese and Spanish, although closely related Romance languages, differ in many aspects of their phonology, grammar, and lexicon. Both belong to a subset of the Romance languages known as West Iberian Romance, which also includes several other languages or dialects with fewer speakers, all of which are mutually intelligible to some degree. A 1949 study by Italian-American linguist Mario Pei, analyzing the degree of difference from a language's parent by comparing phonology, inflection, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation, indicated the following percentages : In the case of Spanish it was 20%, the third closest Romance language to Latin, only behind Sardinian and Italian. Portuguese was 31%, making it the second furthest language from Latin after French.
The Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language is the language regulator for Philippine Spanish, the variant of the Spanish language spoken in the Philippines. It is one of two Spanish language regulators located in countries where the language does not have an official status nationwide, the other being the North American Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States.
The Diccionario de la lengua española is the authoritative dictionary of the Spanish language. It is produced, edited and published by the Royal Spanish Academy, with the participation of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language. It was first published in 1780, as the Diccionario de la lengua castellana and subsequent editions have been published about once a decade. The twenty-third edition was published in 2014; it is available on-line, incorporating modifications to be included in the twenty-fourth print edition.
The Kingdom of Granada was a territorial jurisdiction of the Crown of Castile from the conclusion of the Reconquista in 1492 until Javier de Burgos' provincial division of Spain in 1833. This was a "kingdom" ("reino") in the second sense given by the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española: the Crown of Castile consisted of several such kingdoms. Its extent is detailed in Gelo del Cabildo's 1751 Respuestas Generales del Catastro de Ensenada (1750–54), which was part of the documentation of a census. Like the other kingdoms within Spain, the Kingdom of Granada was abolished by the 1833 territorial division.
Carapulcra, or carapulca, is an ancient Andean dish that has been prepared for centuries by both Quechua peoples and Aymara peoples. The original term for this dish in the Aymara language is qala phurk'a, which means a stew made with hot stones. In contemporary Peruvian cuisine and Bolivian cuisine, it is a stew of pork and papa seca, with peanuts, aji panca and mirasol peppers, garlic, and other spices like clove. In ancient times llama meat or alpaca meat would have been used, and some people still use these meats today. It is usually eaten with rice, boiled potatoes or yuca.
A Charanga is a small amateur marching band with wind and percussion instruments that plays festivals mainly in Northern Spain, Basque Country, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León and the Valencian Community. In the past, the name charanga also applied to certain military musical bands of the Spanish Army and as ship's company bands in the Spanish Navy.
The Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española is a dictionary of the Spanish language, written by Sebastián de Covarrubias in 1611.
Spanish personal pronouns have distinct forms according to whether they stand for the subject (nominative) or object, and third-person pronouns make an additional distinction for direct object (accusative) or indirect object (dative), and for reflexivity as well. Several pronouns also have special forms used after prepositions.
