Curiosities of the Spanish Language

 

Spanish is a language spoken in a large part of the world, and you should know that it is a very rich language, but it is for this reason that Curiosities of the Spanish Language , rarities in its writing and understanding of which we are going to comment on in this article.

Curiosities of the Spanish Language that you did not know until today

The Spanish language has been characterized by being very broad, which is why we can also find many oddities or singularities in its writing and phonetics. Spanish is the official language of many countries, most of them Latin American. Some of the curiosities of this language are the following:

6 Continents use Spanish

Many people have the belief that this language is only spoken in Latin America. But the reality is that it is spoken on all five continents, namely:

• Europe : Spain
• America : it is spoken in all Central and South American countries, except Brazil, but it is taken as a second language of study.
• Africa : It is spoken in Ceuta and Melilla, the Canary Islands, Equatorial Guinea and in the Western Sahara.
• Oceania : It is spoken on the famous Easter Island in Polynesia.
• Antarctica : in the Argentine towns of Fortín Sargento Cabral and in Villa La Estrella, a Chilean town.

Has a wide vocabulary

Spanish or Castilian as it is also known has a dictionary called the RAE, where there are 88,000 words, some of them are really very strange, but it is a great figure only surpassed by English, which has 350 thousand.

What is the First Document written in this language?

The first writing that we have in this language dates from the year 959, it was written by a monk who lived in the San Justo y San Pastor Convent, located in La Rozuela, although it is not very important in terms of content, because it was only a list for the purchase and acquisition of provisions and deliveries of cheese made by the convent.

Why is it the Fastest to Pronounce?

The speed of speaking Spanish is based on the number of syllables that can be pronounced per second, it is on par with the Japanese language. It differs from German and Mandarin, which are the ones that require more time to be pronounced.

What letters are used more?

The vowels E, A and O, plus the consonants L and S are the ones that have the most pronunciation by Spanish speakers daily, the letter E is used on average by 17 percent, while the letter E is used the least. W, that we only use 0.01%.

Letters that were removed

The letters Ch and Ll were eliminated by the RAE in 1994, the letter H is the only one in the alphabet that does not have any type of sound when used in a word, except when it is preceded by the letter "c". As a curious fact, in ancient times the words that we use today with the letter h, were previously used in the Latin version with the letter f, for example farina, which is currently written as flour.

Curiosity of the letter Ñ

This is a letter that comes from the letter na to which a larger tilde was added that is placed at the top, in the past this tilde was larger than the letter, over time it was flattened until it reached the one we know today , and was given the name of virgulilla. This element is one of those that distinguishes Spanish.

This letter ñ can be found in other languages ​​such as Aragonese, Galician, Basque, Aymara, Mixtec, Zapotec, Breton, Filipino, Guarani or Quechua.

Was he previously called the “Christian”?

With the arrival of the Arabs in the south of Spain, the population began to call it a Christian language to refer to the people who spoke Spanish and establish the difference with the Arabs.

What is the longest word in Spanish?

The longest word in Spanish is electorencephalographist, it has 23 letters and is found in the RAE dictionary.

What Phrase is the Most Repeated by People?

The phrase or tagline that is repeated the most among people and that sometimes causes discomfort listening to it is “Do you understand me?”, because it makes the question that the receiver is not understanding what is being said.

Which Country Will Speak More Spanish in the Future?

It is believed that by the year 2050 the United States will be the country that speaks the most Spanish with an estimated figure of 100 million people, which indicates that the language is growing rapidly, currently this record is held by Mexico.

Oddities of the Spanish Language

There are other oddities or eccentricities within the Spanish language, some of them have to do with the way of writing some words:

• There are pentavocalic words, which contain all five vowels.
• Previously, the use of two types of accents was established: the acute that is used today and the circumflex that is only preserved in Romance languages ​​such as French.
• There are words that have the same letters but arranged in a different order which are called anagrams.
• Although the RAE only has 88 thousand words, the language has approximately 300,000 different words or concepts.
• A person who speaks Spanish uses an average of 300 words. This amount increases in educated people to 500 words a day, although a writer or journalist can use up to 3,000 different words in a piece of writing.
• Miguel de Cervantes used some 8,000 different words in his work Don Quixote.
• The word Recognize is read the same way from left to right or vice versa.
• There are long words that do not have repeated letters, example: spin.
• The word Equatorial Guinea has each letter repeated twice.
• The word I was, contains four letters followed by the alphabet: stuv.
• The strangest words in Spanish are: amover, barbián, jipiar, orate, vagido.
• 8% of Spanish vocabulary comes from words inherited from Arabic.