There are two names given in Spanish to the Spanish language: español ("Spanish") and castellano ("Castilian"). 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.
The Iberian Romance, Ibero-Romance or sometimes Iberian languages are a group of Romance languages that developed on the Iberian Peninsula, an area consisting primarily of Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Andorra and southern France. They are today more commonly separated into West Iberian and Occitano-Romance language groups.
The core of the English language descends from the Old English language, brought from the 500s with the Anglo, Saxon, and Jutish settlers to what would be called England. The bulk of the language in spoken and written texts is from this source. As a statistical rule, around 70 percent of words in any text are Old English. Moreover, the grammar is largely Old English.
Andalusi Romance, also called Mozarabic, refers to the varieties of Ibero-Romance spoken in Al-Andalus, the parts of the medieval Iberian Peninsula under Islamic control. Romance, or vernacular Latin, was the common tongue for the majority of the population in the wake of the Umayyad conquest in the early eighth century. Over the following centuries, Andalusi Arabic gradually spread and eventually superseded Andalusi Romance as the main spoken language in the Muslim-controlled south. Castilian, an anomalous form of Ibero-Romance, expanded over other varieties of Romance as the Christian kingdoms gained territory in Iberia. The final disappearance of Andalusi Romance dates to around the thirteenth century.
Joan Coromines i Vigneaux was a linguist who made important contributions to the study of Catalan, Spanish, and other Romance languages.
Most of the Portuguese vocabulary comes from Latin because Portuguese is a Romance language.
Iberian languages is a generic term for the languages currently or formerly spoken in the Iberian Peninsula.
French is a Romance language that specifically is classified under the Gallo-Romance languages.
Arabic influence on the Spanish language overwhelmingly dates from the Muslim rule in 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.
The language known today as Spanish is derived from spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Today it is the world's 4th most widely spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. Influenced by the peninsular hegemony of Al-Andalus in the early middle ages, Hispano-Romance varieties borrowed substantial lexicon from Arabic. Upon the southward territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Castile, Hispano-Romance norms associated to this polity displaced both Arabic and the Mozarabic romance varieties in the conquered territories, even though the resulting speech also assimilated features from the latter in the process. The first standard written norm of Spanish was brought forward in the 13th century by Alfonso X the Wise, probably drawing from the speech of the upper classes of Toledo. Features associated with the Castilian patterns of Hispano-Romance also spread west and east to the kingdoms of León and Aragón for the rest of the middle ages, owing to the political prestige achieved by the Kingdom of Castile in the peninsular context and to the lesser literary development of their vernacular norms. From the 1560s onward the standard written form followed Madrid's.
¡Ole! or ¡olé! is a Spanish interjection used to cheer on or praise a performance, especially associated with the audience of bullfighting and flamenco dance. The word is also commonly used in many other contexts in Spain, and has become closely associated with the country; therefore it is often used outside Spain in cultural representation of the Spanish people. In some Latin American countries, but not in Spain, it may be used as a term of mockery. In football, it can be used both as a form of mockery or encouragement depending on the context the word is used, and it is also frequently used as a football chant outside Spain as in "Olé, Olé, Olé".
The languages of Portugal are Portuguese, Mirandese and Portuguese Sign Language. Historically, Celtic and Lusitanian were spoken in what is now Portugal.
Jácaras are Spanish songs which are accompanied with instruments and are performed during the entr'acte of a theatrical performance and also as an accompaniment to many types of dance.
The Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico is a discursive etymological dictionary of Spanish compiled by Joan Coromines in collaboration with José Antonio Pascual. It was completed in the late 1970s and published in five volumes in the early 1980s. The entries Y and Z plus an index of the five volumes was published as a sixth volume in 1991. The dictionary is an expansion and consolidation of earlier etymological publications by Corominas, particularly the mid-1950s Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana.
The Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana is a four-volume etymological dictionary of Spanish compiled by the Catalan philologist Joan Corominas (1905-1997), and first published by Francke Verlag in Bern, Switzerland, in 1954.
The Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana is an etymological dictionary compiled by the Catalan philologist Joan Corominas (1905–1997), and first published in 1961—with revised editions in 1973, 1993, and 2008—by Gredos in Madrid.
