Autor: antoniosabariego

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The Spanish Alphabet. I (El alfabeto español. I)

spanish_n

The ñ letter, the big star of the Spanish language.

What wouldn’t I find in the Spanish language?

I would like to start the post being frank, just not to disappoint your Spanish language expectations:

· We use an alphabet, what we called both “abecedario” or “alfabeto”. That means that we do not communicate by means of pictures, like Chinese or Japanese people. Besides we do not use many auxiliary symbols, like lines beneath and above or circles. Spanish quite a naked language, just a few, very specific symbols are used with our letters.

· What you say it’s what is written. Actually, Spanish is quite regular in its orthography, but you will find the it a bit confusing when it comes to the use of crossed-sound letters. That’s my coinage for saying that some letters may have different sounds realisations attending to the vowels or consonants that are around. They are rare and quite a few, once you’ve learnt them you can manage Spanish pronounciation perfectly!

What would I find in the Spanish languages?

As it was explained in a former post, the Spanish language is written in the Latin alphabet, that means two things:

· The traditional graphics from the Latin language are used along with some modifications, like the widely known, exclusively Spanish “ñ” and some vowels with auxiliary symbols: á, é, í, ó, ú and ü.

· For every letter there is one sound, or in other words, each sound is associated with one letter. Thus, se lee como se escribe (what is written is pronounced). As it was explained above: more or less. That’s why the next posts are necessary – to become used to the Spanish written system.

Plus, I guess you will find very interesting the matter of doubled usual symbols. One thing that people do not usually expect when learning Spanish is the use of usual graphic symbols, like ‘?’ (signo de interrogación) and ‘!’ (signo de exclamación), doubled! We used them both as well at the beginning of the sentence, but they are written the other way down, upwards; like:

     ¡Qué guapa que eres! ( You’re such a beauty!)

    ¿Cómo te llamas? (What’s your name?)

Finally, our quotation marks are always written at the same level, the upper one. This feature coincides with English or Italian, but it differs from languages such as Polish, Russian or German.

     El niño dice: “las galletas están muy ricas” (the boy says: “the cookies are quite tasty”)

Federico_Garcia_Lorca_Buddha_1

This is how Spanish looks like in the handwriting of the great poet Federico García Lorca.

In the next posts, I will write about the current Spanish alphabet, the sounds and the orthography. Soon we will all be reading in Spanish!

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Where can Spanish take me to? (¿Dónde puede llevarme el español?)

Wherever you want:

Check this figures: Spanish is the mother tongue of 425. 636. 709 people in the world, meanwhile 69.460.000 people use it and understand it. That makes almost 500.000.000 Spanish speakers all around the globe to talk with! That makes as well Spanish a language easily to find on the planet and, of course, with a huge variation.

It is the official language in Spain, where it was born, and in plenty of territories of the South American Continent, from Mexico to Argentina, with the only exception of Brasil and the three Guyana. In Chile, Puerto Rico and Uruguay it is not recognized as official language, but it is widely spoken in there. In USA it is spoken as well by the Hispanos in many states, check for example the clear-blue coloured states in the chart.

In Africa, Spanish is spoken in Marocco, Occidental Sahara, and New Guinea, along with other countries. Remember, Canary Islands (Las islas canarias) are close to Africa as well! In addition to that, Spanish is also present in some parts of Asia, think for example in Filipines.

Which is the furthest place where Spanish can take me? Well, probably here, to the Antarctica: the Fortín Sargento Cabral, in the Esperanza Bay, Antarctica peninsula, and Villa de las Estrellas, in Rey Jorge Island, just in front of the former Argentinan city. These two are the only stable civil cities in the Antarctica continent. They even have a school, do you dare to have an exchange in there?

Taken from http://www.profesorenlinea.cl/Chilegeografia/VillaLasestrellas.htm;
Check it, if you are interested in knowing more about this white Spanish-speaker place.
In Spanish, if need help, tell me

Taking into account the places where Spanish is spoken and all those cousins and siblings it has, your Spanish can take you quite far.

Couple of activities to share with you: In your opinion which is the country with most Spanish speakers? And the biggest city from the Spanish speakers’ map? And the most populated one? and in your country how is the situation of Spanish?

Waiting for your comments, opinions and ideas!

This post, and the two lattest one, were done using my own knowledge and information taken from Wikipedia’s article on the Spanish language, in Spanish, and the RAE webpage.

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Wait a moment! What am I learning, ‘Castellano» or «Español» (¡Un momento! ¿Qué voy a aprender, «castellano» o «español»?)

Nevermind, because both words stand for the same – what in English context is called “the Spanish language”. The difference, more than being linguistic, seems to be ideological or historical. The DRAE (Dictionary of the Royal Academy for the Spanish Language) says that they are both synonyms, although there may be some differences in use:

· Castellano, although referring to “the Spanish language” as a whole, it can also make reference to that Spanish language spoken in Castilla (a part of Spain). The DRAE mentions that it is used when establishing a distinction between Spanish and other languages spoken in the Peninsula.

· Español, refers to “the Spanish language” as a whole in reference to other languages of the world. It is also the most widespread name around the world, like for example Spanish (in English), espagnol (French) or spagnolo (Italian).

So you can freely say from now onwards: ¡Yo hablo español! Or ¡Yo hablo castellano! (I speak Spanish) and everyone will understand what you speak, unless, of course, they do not know Spanish.

A small exercise: how do you name the Spanish language in your mother tongue? Is it similar to the first or to the second version? Is it completely different? Do you happen to know why? Please share your opinions, comments and doubts!

¡Os espero más abajo!

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What is the Spanish language? (¿Qué es el español?)

The Spanish language, traditionally called in Spanish “español” o “castellano”, is a Romance language – that means: its mother is the old-grandma Latin and its cousins are all those Latin-based languages spoken all around the European continent, such as French, Italian, Portuguese or Romanian.

Spanish’s mother is the so-called Iberoromance branch, a woman who stablished a rather big linguistic family in the Iberian Peninsula; thus, the direct siblings of Spanish are languages like Galego (spoken in Iberian Galicia), Asturiano (spoken in Asturias), Portuguese (Portugal along with other countries non-Iberian like Brasil) or Sefardí (Spanish spoken by former Spanish Jewish), among others.

Spanish language receives its main influence from Latin, in practically the whole language, and other languages which it has been in contact with along the history: in older times with Basque, Classic Greek or Arabic, in modern times with American languages like Nahuatl or Quechua, and in much more recent times with other European languages like French, English, Italian or German.

As a brief moment of reflection: nowadays Spanish is written in an inherited Latin alphabet, with just a few modifications from the original (think for example in this symbol “ñ”). But this language has been written with many other alphabets, like arabic, back in Mediaeval times where Spanish arabic version – Mozárabe – was spoken and written, or in Hebrew alphabet, when Jewish used to lived in the country.

So, when you wonder what am I learning, remember that you are actually learning a very old language which has been opened to so many changes and influences that it has been shaped in a very unique form, mixing the Orient and the Occident, the North and the South of Europe amongst its words and structures. Isn’t it appealing?

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It’s alive! The blog is alive!

¡Hola a todos!
Before starting with the explanations about the Spanish language, like the grammar descriptions or the sound map, I would like to post some information about the language we are going to work with. Today, I will start with a brief linguistic description of the Spanish language, where did it come from and a very rough narrative of its history. Tomorrow, you will have a post devoted to the names of the language and, finally, on Thursday the last info post devoted to the current situation of Spanish: where it is spoken, understood and so on.

I hope you find these introductory posts interesting and useful to have an idea of the Spanish language in the world. If you happen to have any doubt or questions, please post a commentary. This will make the blog more lively and active, which is one of my main interests: teaching and learning altogether. This is my very first experience in blogging, so I am open to suggestions and commentaries!

¡Bienvenidos al español, compañeros!