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SPANISH

Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language | Date: 1998

SPANISH A Romance language of Western Europe, spoken by c.250m people worldwide: the official language of Spain (including the Balearic and Canary Islands), and most of the nations of Central and South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, PANAMA, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela. In Paraguay, official status is shared with Guarani, and in Peru, with Quechua, both Amerindian languages. Spanish is spoken in the US, especially in the Southwest (Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas), Florida, parts of Louisiana, and such cosmopolitan cities as New York City and Chicago, as well as in the Commonwealth of PUERTO RICO. It has also been spoken on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and by Sephardic Jews in North Africa, Turkey, and the Balkans. In Africa, it is the official language of Equatorial Guinea and is spoken in parts of Morocco and in the Spanish COASTAL enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. In Asia, it is spoken by a small minority in the Philippines. There have been Spanish CREOLES in Colombia, the Caribbean, and the Philippines.

Origins

Historically, Spanish evolved out of Late Vulgar Latin, with minor Germanic and major ARABIC influence. Its history is divided into three periods: Old Spanish (c.750–1500), Renaissance Spanish (1500 to 1808, the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in Spain), and Modern Spanish (since 1808). At the close of the Roman period (early 5c), the Iberian Peninsula was overrun by the Vandals and Visigoths, Germanic invaders who contributed such war-related vocabulary as brida (bridle), dardo (dart), guerra (war), and hacha (axe). During the Muslim period (711–1492), when much of the peninsula was held by Moorish rules, ARABIC loanwords were absorbed into the local post-Latin dialects, such as aceituna an olive, ahorrar to save, albóndiga a meatball, alfalfa, algebra, alquilar rent, cifra a cipher, zero, naranja an orange, ojala may Allah grant, may it happen, if only, some hope. This influx appears to have been made easy by the Christians who lived in Moorish territories: they were known as mozárabes, from Arabic musta'rib, Arabicized. Many of them were probably bilingual, speaking Arabic and the now-extinct variety of Spanish known as Mozarabic. The national epic, El poema/cantar de mío Cid (the Poem/Song of My Lord), in which the word cid is of Arabic origin (as-sīd lord), is from the period of the Reconquest.

Works of literature first appeared in Spanish c.1150 and a literary language was firmly established by the 15c. Three pivotal events all occurred in 1492: (1) ‘The Catholic kings’, Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and Aragon, completed the reconquest of Spain by taking Granada, the last Moorish kingdom. (2) Christopher Columbus, acting on their behalf, sailed west to find China and India and instead discovered the Americas. (3) The first grammar of a modern European language was published, Antonio de Nebrija's Gramática de la lengua castellana (Grammar of the Castilian Language), duly followed by his dictionary and orthography. Spain became a world power and the centre of a vast empire. The standard language of Spain and its empire was based on Castilian (the dialect of Castile), and for this reason continues to be referred to in Spanish as both castellano and espan̄ol.

Spanish in the United States

Spanish has been spoken longer than English in what is now the US. Spanish settlement in San Agustin, Florida, dates from 1565, various areas in new Mexico were settled in 1598, and settlements in California were established from 1769 on. As the English-speaking US expanded, it incorporated territory originally held by Spain (Florida), France (the Louisiana Purchase), and Mexico (the Southwest, from Texas to California). Spanish was also incorporated into the US, by the addition of TEXAS in 1845 and the rest of the Southwest by the Mexican Cession in 1848. Although statehood for the Territory of New Mexico was delayed until 1912 at least partly because of a lack of English-speaking citizens, Spanish was later granted legal status there along with English. Puerto Rico became associated with the US in 1898 and currently has Commonwealth status, with Puerto Ricans holding US citizenship.

In recent years, immigration from Latin America has made Spanish the second most widely spoken language in the US. The influx of Cubans into Florida beginning in 1960 turned the Miami-Dade County area into a centre of Hispanic language and culture. In the Southwest, immigration from Mexico increased during and shortly after the Mexican Revolution (1912–15), after World War II, and in the 1980s, Immigration from Central America also increased rapidly in the 1980s. The increasing Hispanic population has given some areas outside the Southwest and Florida a decidedly Hispanic flavour, including the cities of New York and Chicago. In all areas, bilingual education has been implemented as a method for bringing new immigrants to fluency in English in the shortest time. In reaction, however, many (including some Hispanics and members of other immigrant groups) have supported the appeals of the organization US English, which advocates a constitutional amendment to declare English the official language of the country and seeks the elimination of bilingual education.

Spanish in English

Because of the reintroduction of Greek learning to Europe by the Arabs in Spain and then the great wealth and power of the new empire, 16c Spain was a major centre of learning. Spanish was a language of high prestige throughout Europe, and in late 16c England was the subject of a number of linguistic treatises, including Richard Percivall's Bibliotheca Hispanica, Containing a Grammar, with a Dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine (1591). The Real Academia (Royal Academy) was founded in 1713, on the model of the French Academy (1637), in order to limpia, fija, y da esplendor (‘purify, fix, and lend splendour’) to the language, the motto on the great seal of the Academy that appears on the spine and title page of all volumes of the Academy's dictionary.

The influence of Spanish on English at large has extended over centuries and been primarily lexical. Phonological and grammatical influences have occurred relatively rarely and recently in the Americas, and have been limited to particular regions and varieties. English shares with Spanish a large vocabulary derived from Latin, due especially to the impact of Norman French after the 11c Norman Conquest of England. During the 16–17c, a time of rapid colonial expansion among the seafaring nations of Europe, Spain and England were competing to amass empires and influence, and Spanish had its first direct impact. Loan-words of the 16c include the orthographically unadapted words armada, cargo, desperado, flotilla, mosquito, mulatto, negro, pec(c)adillo, sombrero and the adapted ambush, cannibal, cask, cigar, comrade, jennet, parade, renegade, sherry. Other loans have entered the language since then, such as unadapted albino, flotilla, hacienda, mesa, plaza, siesta, adapted barbecue, caramel, cockroach, corvette, doubloon, escapade, guitar, jade, lime, maroon, picaresque, quadroon. Some Spanish loans have Arabic origins, such as alfalfa (Arabic al-fasfasah), alcazar (Arabic al-qasr the castle), alcove (through French alcôve, from Spanish alcoba, from Arabic al-qubbah the vault).

A wave of New World BORROWINGS occurred in the 19c, mainly in the Southwest of the US, such as the unadapted arroyo, bronco, cantina, corral, gringo, mesa, patio, rodeo, tequila, and the adapted alligator, buckaroo, chaps, lariat, mustang, ranch. Many items borrowed from Spanish were through Spanish from indigenous Amerindian languages, such as avocado, chocolate, coyote, peyote, from the Aztec language Nahuatl. In the 20c, there has been a second wave throughout the US, related to the increase in Latin American immigration; loans include contras, guerrilla, jefe, macho/machismo, as well as such culinary terms as burrito, chiles rellenos, flautas, frijoles, frijoles refritos, nacho, pan dulce, salsa, taco, tortilla.

English in Spanish

In recent decades, English has had a greater influence on Spanish than vice versa. This has happened wherever Spanish is spoken, but is particularly noticeable where Spanish- and English-speaking communities live as neighbours (such as along the US–Mexican border) and where communities of speakers of one language have migrated to the territory of another (such as Puerto Ricans in New York City: British expatriate communities and facilities for holiday-makers along the Mediterranean littoral of Spain). Close contact between the two languages has produced hybrid forms, for which casual names have arisen: SPANGLISH, a term covering all forms of English influenced by Spanish and Spanish influenced by English, and the more particular TEX-MEX or Border Lingo along the Texas–Mexican border.

In general, the influence is lexical, especially in the borrowing and adaptation of technical and sporting terms. Many of these borrowings are accepted only grudgingly or until more Hispanicized equivalents are coined. Not all are current in all dialects, but are clearly favoured in contact dialects. Some expressions are borrowings, either unadapted or adapted, while others are Anglicisms in a more general sense: loan shifts resulting from English influence in the usage of traditional Spanish words, often cognates of English Romance-derived words. Examples of borrowings are: (in sport) boxeo boxing, boxear to box, nocaut a knockout, noquear to knock out, jonrón a home run, jonronear to make a home run, fútbol, criquet, basquetbol; (culinary) cake/queque a cake, pangqueques pancakes, (miel)maple maple syrup, bistec a beefsteak, cóctel a cocktail, hamburguesa, a hamburger; (in politics) agenda, boicot a boycott, boicotear to boycott, cartel, detective; (in general usage) bus, camuflaje, esmoking a dinner jacket, tuxedo, esnob a snob, esnobismo snobbery, jazz, jet, microchip, parquear to park, troca a truck.

Loan shifts and translations may compete with established usages: the verbs rentar with alquilar (to rent) and clarificar with aclarar (to clarify); the nouns elevador with acensor a lift, elevator; profesional with profesionista a professional. They may also provide a new sense for a traditional word: carácter, in the theatre as opposed to personaje; conductor, of music as opposed to director; década for ten years as opposed to ten of anything; educación for schooling as opposed to manners. Sometimes they are entirely new: perro caliente a hot dog, escuela alta high school. Others, such as filmoteca a library of films, are loan blends.

See AMERICAN ENGLISH, CHICANO ENGLISH, DIALECT (AMERICA), ENGLISH LANGUAGE AMENDMENT, GIBRALTAR, PHILIPPINE ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE, ROMANCE LANGUAGES.


© Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language 1998, originally published by Oxford University Press 1998.