The Spanish Language

The Spanish language developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Basque in the north and Arabic in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida; Latin lupus, Spanish lobo), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish ano) and diphthongation of breve E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo; Latin tempus, Spanish tiempo; Latin ferrum, Spanish ' 'fierro' and now 'hierro). Similar phenomena can be found in most other Romance languages as well.

The Spanish language is also called Castilian. It originated in the Cordillera Cantabrica, in northern Spain.

After the Reconquista, this northern dialect was brought to the south.

The language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by the Spanish colonization which began in the 16th century.

The Catholic church preached to the natives in selected local languages like Guarani, Quechua and Aymara in the Americas, and Tagalog in the Philippines, rather than Spanish, for ease of conversion and to separate them from the direct influence of the non-missionary Spaniards, held by the church to be evil and unfavorable for the natives.

In the Americas its usage was continued by the descendants of the Spaniards, whether by the large population of Spanish criollos or by what had then become the mixed Spanish-Amerindian (mestizos) majority. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population to strengthen national unity.

In the Philippines, this process did not occur for several reasons. It was isolated as the only Spanish colony in Asia, far removed from all of Spain's colonies in the Americas. Rather than being a direct colony of Spain, the Philippines was in fact a colony of another Spanish colony, New Spain, and was administered from Mexico City, thereby lessening the ties and interest of Spain proper, and disabling the large scale Spanish migration experienced across the Americas. In comparison to its counterparts in Spanish America, the Philippine population was, and still is, almost exclusively native, mixed Spanish-Filipinos (Filipino mestizos) were dismal in numbers, while Spaniards (of which a great many were actually Mexican Criollos) accounted for even fewer than the Mestizos. Following the Spanish-American War the small number of Spaniards present in the country eventually returned to New Spain (Mexico) and Spain. Ultimately, at the culmination of the Philippine-American War many of the already minuscule Mestizo population was decimated as casualties of war. English was then declared an official language. Spanish finally ceased to be an official language of the Philippines in 1973. A creole language called Chabacano developed as a lingua franca in the south when the Spaniards built forts to combat the muslims and imported workers from all over the country. The local languages, then and now, are not mutually intelligible.

Unlike the Philippines, when Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as consequence of the same Spanish-American War, its population was by then almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Spanish (mulatto and mestizo) descent, thereby enabling the retention of their bequeathed Spanish language as a mother tongue while co-existing with the American imposed English as a co-official. A similar situation ocurred in the American Southwest including California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where Spaniards, then Californios (Spanish criollos in California)) and then Mexicans, maintained Spanish alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories, since the 1500s' . Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immingrants from Latin America to the United States.

In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara and parts of the United States, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City, that had not been part of the Spanish Empire. In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War.

Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain.