Spanish
Spanish is a member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European
family of languages. It is the mother tongue of about 40 million people in Spain,
where the language originated, and the official language in 19 Latin American
countries. With at least 330 million speakers worldwide, Spanish is one of the
most widely spoken languages in the world and is one of the six official languages
of the United Nations.
Spanish is a descendant of the Vulgar Latin brought to the Iberian peninsula
by the soldiers and colonists of ancient Rome.. Thus, Spanish vocabulary is
basically of Latin origin, although it has been enriched by many loan words
from other languages, especially Arabic, French, Italian, and, in Latin American,
by the various indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America. There
are a number of Spanish dialects. In Spain, the Castilian dialect has been the
accepted standard of the language since the middle of the 13th century, largely
owing to the political importance of Castile. There are a few striking differences
in pronunciation between Castilian and the major dialects of Latin American
Spanish, on the whole, however, the differences between the Spanish dialects
of Europe and of Latin America with reference to pronunciation, vocabulary,
and grammar are relatively minor.
Sources:
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