Learn Spanish

The standard Spanish language is also called Castillian. The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso el Sabio and the first grammar of Spanish was written by Antonio de Nebrija in 1492.
In 1713 the Spanish Royal Academy was founded with the purpose of preserving the “purity “ of the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726-1739, and its first grammar in 1771.

Today , each of the Spanish-speaking countries has the analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951.
When the United Nations organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official languages (a sixth language, Arabic, was added in 1973).

The list of Nobel laureates in Literature includes eleven authors who wrote in Spanish: José Echegaray, Jacinto Benavente, Gabriela Mistral, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Vicente Aleixandre, Gabriel García Márquez, Camilo José Cela, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Back Home

The article and picture form Wikipedia, the free enciclopedia

Spanish Langugage in the United States

According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Latino by origin; 34 million people, 12.2 percent, of the population more than five years old speak Spanish at home.

Spanish has a long history in the United States because many south-western states were part of Mexico, and Florida was also part of Spain, and it recently has been revitalized by Hispanic immigrants.
Spanish is the most widely taught language in the country after English. Although the United States has no formally designated "official languages," Spanish is formally recognized at the state level in various states in addition to English. It also has strong influence in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York City, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Chicago and in the last decade, the language has rapidly expanded in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Richmond, Washington, DC, and Missouri. Spanish is the dominant spoken language in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.
With a total of 33,701,181 Spanish (Castilian) speakers, according to US Census Bureau, the U.S. has the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking population. Spanish ranks second, behind English, as the language spoken most widely at home.



Spanish spoken in the United States. Darker shades of blue indicate higher percentages of Spanish speakers.
.
.