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History Of The Spanish Language In Latin America

February 3rd, 2010

The Spanish language arrived in America initial through Cristóbal Colón’s exploratory travels, and then with the remainder of colonizers, at the end 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 yet to be established, and this was done through a process labelled by historians as “hispanización”.

During this period, the southern half of the Yankee 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, so, was very a challenge in the primary stages, and it had been done first through gestures and shortly through captive natives who acted as interpreters.

The Catholic Church played a elementary role within the growth of the Spanish language throughout Latin America. Therefore, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries established faculties where they educated and converted into Catholicism most children and teenagers. Of course, this was all drained Spanish, and therefore this language began to penetrate little by little in the daily lives of the various indigenous groups.

The evangelization was in the middle 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.

However, there was a two-way flow of cultural and linguistic influence between the colonizers and also the colonized. This happened as a result of, no matter their dominant position, the natives of Spain continually constituted a terribly tiny minority within the American continent. Therefore, there was a constant 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 Yank Spanish. African languages, brought by people who were taken to America as slaves, conjointly contributed to the formation of this made mosaic.

Simply paying attention to the intonation of the different South Yankee Spanish dialects we have a tendency to can see that they are nearer to the varied native languages than to peninsular Spanish. In terms of vocabulary, two of the most influential languages were the Mexican náhuatl (spoken by the Aztecs) or the Peruvian quechua (spoken by the Incas). These two languages were accepted and spoken by a significant part of the population, and therefore they were used for commerce functions, even after the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Examples of words that are incorporated into American 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 purpose before starting their long journey was Seville, in Andalucía, the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Since they stayed a very long time while preparing their adventure, they ended up adopting a number of the characteristics of the Andalusian dialect. Then they took them to the “new world”. This can be why Yankee Spanish shares most of the Spanish pronunciation characteristics with Andalusian Spanish. The most significant one is that the phenomenon known as “seseo”, that indicates the very fact {that the} sound “c” (pronounced “th”) is transformed into the sound “s”.

Of these factors have created Yank Spanish the rich and multicultural linguistic selection that it’s today.

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