What makes Spanish special? This presentation highlights the special, and even unique, aspects of Spanish language history, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation.

1. www.spanishlinguist.us
The top 10 reasons
why Spanish is special

2. www.spanishlinguist.us
1. Spanish is a major world language

3. www.spanishlinguist.us
• More than 400 million people speak Spanish as a first
language, making it the #2 language in the world, after
Mandarin Chinese and ahead of English.
• Spanish is an official language in 21 countries in Europe,
Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas.
• It is the #3 language on the Internet, judging by its number
of Internet users (according to InternetWorldStats.com).

4. www.spanishlinguist.us
2. Spanish is proudly international

5. www.spanishlinguist.us
• Every Spanish-speaking country (including the U.S.A.) has a
Spanish language Academy whose members are professors,
writers, journalists, and so on.
• Representatives of these Academies from around the world meet
periodically to debate language issues. For example, in 1994 they
voted to eliminate ch and ll from the Spanish alphabet.
• They also publish grammar guides and dictionaries that
incorporate both European and Latin American Spanish.
• No other international language has a comparable system.

6. www.spanishlinguist.us
3. Military might, not cultural clout,
made Spanish a national language

7. www.spanishlinguist.us
• Most European languages spread from long-established cultural
centers (London, Paris, Moscow, etc.).
• In other cases a famous writer, such as Dante (Italian) or Martin
Luther (German) set the national standard.
• In contrast, Spanish originated in the provincial city of Burgos, the
hometown of El Cid, Spain’s national hero, in the region of Castile.
• As the Catholic armies gradually retook Spain from its Moorish
occupiers, Castilian Spanish came to dominate the country.
• Madrid became the capital city only late in this process.

8. www.spanishlinguist.us
4. Spanish is the only language that uses the
upside-down ¡ and ¿ marks

9. www.spanishlinguist.us
• The ¡ and ¿ marks were invented by the Real Academia Española
(the official academic body of the Spanish language) in 1754.
• The goal was to give readers a heads-up at the beginning of an
exclamation or question.
• This followed a failed attempt to use the regular ! and ? marks for
this purpose.
• No other language has ever adopted ¡ and ¿.

10. www.spanishlinguist.us
5. Spanish doesn’t use apostrophes

11. www.spanishlinguist.us
• Apostrophes are used in all other Western Romance languages: French
(e.g. j’ai for je + ai), Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian.
• They are also used in English and most other languages written in the
Roman alphabet (some exceptions are Polish and Hungarian)…
• … and in some languages written in other alphabets (Greek, Ukrainian).
• Essentially, Spanish doesn’t need the apostrophe because it doesn’t
drop sounds.

12. www.spanishlinguist.us
6. Spanish is one of the few languages
with the th sound

13. www.spanishlinguist.us
• The th sound (as in English thing), which linguists write as /θ/, is a
hallmark of Castilian Spanish, spoken in Madrid and northern Spain.
• This sound is as rare worldwide as the clicks of African languages like Zulu.
• It evolved in the 15th - 17th centuries when the Old Spanish ts and dz
sounds merged into a kind of an s, which then moved forward in the
mouth to form th.
• In contrast, in southern Spain and the New World these sounds merged
with regular s.
• Other changes at the same time eliminated the z sound (but not the letter
z) and created the /x/ sound heard at the beginning of José and genial.

14. www.spanishlinguist.us
7. Spanish has many ways to talk about the past

15. www.spanishlinguist.us
• The previous slide shows eight common grammatical
forms that are used to talk about the past in Spanish.
• Of the 64 languages studied by linguist Östen Dahl, only
Kikuyu, a Bantu language of Africa, had a comparable
number of past tense expressions.

16. www.spanishlinguist.us
8. Spanish has two perfectly grammatical alternative sets of
endings for a single verb form (the imperfect subjunctive)
• Ojalá que fuera/fuese rico.
‘I wish I were rich’.
• Quería que hubiéramos/hubiésemos venido.
‘She wished we had come.’
• Dudé que me amaran/amasen.
‘I doubted that they loved me.’

17. www.spanishlinguist.us
• The -ra form of the imperfect subjunctive (as in fuera,
hubiéramos, and amaran on the previous slide) is both more
recent and more common than the -se form.
• However, they are both understood throughout the Spanish-
speaking world, and can even alternate within a single sentence.
• This is the only case I’m aware of, in any language, of this kind of
duplication.

18. www.spanishlinguist.us
9. Spanish vocabulary comes from everywhere!

19. www.spanishlinguist.us
• Latin gave Spanish its initial vocabulary, and in the last millenium has
continued to be an active source of new borrowings.
• Other sources of Spanish vocabulary include Celtic, Basque, Arabic,
Visigothic, Greek, French, other Romance languages, English, and the
indigenous languages of Latin America.
• Approximately 1/3 of Spanish vocabulary comes from its initial Latin
core, 1/3 from later Latin borrowings, and 1/3 from other sources.

20. www.spanishlinguist.us
10. En means both ‘in’ and ‘on’
La fruta está en el tazón.
‘The fruit is in the bowl.’
El tazón está en la mesa.
‘The bowl is on the table.’

21. www.spanishlinguist.us
• It’s unusual for a language to combine the notions of ‘in’
and ‘on’. Spanish (and Portuguese) are well-known
exceptions.
• Some languages even break down the notion of ‘on’ into
finer categories, such as ‘resting on a supporting surface’
(like the bowl on the table) versus ‘permanently attached’
(like a handle on a door).

22. www.spanishlinguist.us
SUMMARY
• 1-3: Spanish is special from a social perspective. It is a major world
language that is proudly international, and that gained prominence for
military rather than cultural reasons.
• 4-5: Written Spanish is special because it uses ¡ and ¿ and not the
apostrophe.
• 6: Spoken Castilian Spanish is special because it has the th sound.
• 7-8: Spanish grammar is special because it has so many ways to talk
about the past, including two versions of the imperfect subjunctive.
• 9-10: Spanish vocabulary is special because it comes from so many
different sources. A specific vocabulary oddity is the merger of the ‘on’
and ‘in’ concepts in the Spanish preposition en.

23. www.spanishlinguist.us
You can now pre-order
Judy Hochberg’s book
¿Por qué? 101 Questions about Spanish
(Bloomsbury Academic Press)