Facts about Spanish Language

If you are studying Spanish, you are among the lucky crowd that can communicate with more than 400 million people worldwide. Spanish is a Romance language forming part of the same language family as Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Galician and Catalan. The roots of the Spanish language go back to 210 BC when Romans introduced their language on arrival to the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish spoken throughout the Iberian Peninsula is called Castilian (Castellano) while in Latin America the common name given is Spanish (Español).

Spanish is the second most spoken language after Mandarin with almost 400 million speakers. Although the official language of 21 countries, Spanish is principally spoken in Spain and Latin America. In North America, over 45 million people speak Spanish and this number is increasing gradually. As a result, it is formally acknowledged in most American states as well as in Europe and America. Spanish is also spoken in Africa (Morocco and Equatorial Guinea), Asia (the Philippines) and Oceania (Easter Island).

The Grammar of Castilian (Gramática de la Lengua Castellana) by Antonio de Nebrija (1492) was the first published works for a European language apart from Latin that focuses on grammar and the usage of language. The Spanish language has about three hundred thousand words / different concepts (not counting variations, technicalities or regionalism). The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy makes it clear that the official number of words in the Spanish language is 88,500. However, it’s true that colloquialisms and internet “lingo” would affect this number. The letters Ch and Ll were removed from the Spanish Alphabet by the Royal Spanish Academy back in 94. The Spanish originally had two accents: the acute accent (the one we use today) and the circumflex accent (el acento circunflejo). The circumflex accent (^) is still used in several other Romance languages. The most commonly used letters in Spanish are “E”, followed by A, O, I, L, and S. The least used letter is the W (0.01%).

Some interesting Spanish words

Oía (heard) has three syllables and three letters.
Aristocrático (aristocrat) each letter appears twice.
Arte (art) is masculine when singular and feminine when plural.
Centrifugado (spin) all letters are different.
Corrección (correction) all letters are used twice.
Ecuatorianos-Aeronaúticos both words are anagram of each other.
Reconocer (recognize) is a palindrome (can be read from left to right and vice versa).