Castilian Spanish
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| Castilian Castellano | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Spain, small minorities in Portugal, California (United States), South America | |
| Total speakers: | 39 million | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castilian | |
| Writing system: | Latin (Spanish variant) | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Spain | |
| Regulated by: | Real Academia Española | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | es | |
| ISO 639-2: | spa | |
| ISO 639-3: | spa | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Castilian Spanish (Spanish: Español castellano) refers to some dialects of the Spanish language as spoken in Spain, also known as Spanish Spanish or Spanish from Spain. (In Spanish castellano on its own refers to the language as a whole.)
The Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy or RAE) favors Castilian Spanish, and many speakers accept RAE as the governing body of the language. However, the sheer population of Mexico and its nearness to the United States gives Mexican Spanish significant weight, somewhat similar to the position of American English within the English language community. Furthermore, some traits of the Spanish spoken in Spain are exclusive to that country, and for this reason courses of Spanish as a second language often neglect them. While there is nothing comparable to American and British English spelling differences, grammar and to a lesser extent pronunciation can vary greatly.
The most striking difference between most dialects in Spain and Latin American Spanish is the pronunciation of the letter z, and of c before front vowels e or i, as a voiceless dental fricative /θ/, English th in thing. Thus, in most variations of Spanish from Spain, cinco (five) sounds like English “think-o” as opposed to “sink-o” in American Spanish. Additionally, all New World dialects drop the vosotros verb form, equivalent to the informal Southern American “y'all”, while retaining ustedes, the formal you-plural.
Inside Spain, there are many regional variations of Spanish, which can be divided roughly into four major dialectal areas:
- Northern Spanish (northern coast, Ebro and Duero valleys...). This dialect is sometimes called Castilian Spanish, but in fact it excludes quite a large area in the historical region of Castile and includes areas not in it.
- Transitional area between North and South (Extremadura, Murcia, Madrid, La Mancha...).
- Andalusian Spanish
- Canarian Spanish
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