Go-Global.com

History Of The Spanish Language In Latin America

The Spanish language arrived in America first through Cristóbal Colón’s exploratory travels, and then with the remainder of colonizers, at the top of the fifteenth century. At this point the Spanish language was already firmly consolidated in the Iberian peninsula. In the “new world”, however, Spanish had nevertheless to be established, and this was done through a method labelled by historians as “hispanización”.

Throughout this period, the southern part of the American continent was a conglomerate of lots of different languages and dialects. Moreover, the cultures {that the} settlers encountered were radically different from the Spanish one. Communication, therefore, was extremely a challenge in the primary stages, and it was done initial through gestures and presently through captive natives who acted as interpreters.

The Catholic Church played a basic role within the expansion of the Spanish language throughout Latin America. Therefore, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries established colleges where they educated and converted into Catholicism most children and teenagers. In fact, this was all drained Spanish, and so this language started to penetrate little by very little within the daily lives of the various indigenous groups.

The evangelization was in the midst of the slow but firm administrative imposition of the Spanish language, which relegated the Amerindian languages to an unprivileged position. This was the inevitable consequence of the cultural and ethnic cleansing imposed by the Spanish Empire to its colonies.

But, there was a two-method flow of cultural and linguistic influence between the colonizers and the colonized. This happened as a result of, notwithstanding their dominant position, the natives of Spain always constituted a terribly small minority within the Yankee continent. Therefore, there was a continuing contact among languages and a progressive mixing among the various populations. This allowed the incorporation of aspects belonging to the pre-Columbian cultures into what would later become Yankee Spanish. African languages, brought by those that were taken to America as slaves, additionally contributed to the formation of this wealthy mosaic.

Just paying attention to the intonation of the various South American Spanish dialects we tend to can see that they’re closer to the various native languages than to peninsular Spanish. In terms of vocabulary, two of the foremost influential languages were the Mexican náhuatl (spoken by the Aztecs) or the Peruvian quechua (spoken by the Incas). These 2 languages were accepted and spoken by a significant part of the population, and therefore they were used for commerce purposes, even when the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Examples of words that have been incorporated into Yank Spanish from these languages are “papa” (potatoe), “cuate” (friend), or “chamaco” (boy).

On the opposite hand, the characteristics of the Spanish explorers were additionally heterogeneous, since they came from everywhere Spain. However, their meeting point before beginning their long journey was Seville, in Andalucía, the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Since they stayed a very long time whereas preparing their adventure, they ended up adopting some of the characteristics of the Andalusian dialect. Then they took them to the “new world”. This is why American Spanish shares most of the Spanish pronunciation characteristics with Andalusian Spanish. The most vital one is the phenomenon known as “seseo”, which indicates the very fact {that the} sound “c” (pronounced “th”) is transformed into the sound “s”.

Of these factors have created Yankee Spanish the wealthy and multicultural linguistic selection that it is today.

You want to learn italian? You can learn this language at the comfort of your own home: visit learn italian. There is no need to join an expensive language class when you can maximize your learning potential with an online Italian course: learn italian.

Share and Enjoy