Talk:Spanish language

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[edit] Colombia

I was wondering if I should mention that Colombians have the best Spanish in the region after Spaniards? Thanks Camilo Sanchez (talk) 00:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

No, that should not be mentioned. That is completely a subjective opinion, and I doubt you'd find legitimate sources to back it up. Kman543210 (talk) 00:27, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I think you are right, i shouldn't mention it so not to start debate. However it has been a widely known fact. Camilo Sanchez (talk) 21:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

To be correct Colombia (esp, Rolo) speaks the most neutral Spanish, this is proven. It also represents the Spanish world be located in the center of it. Rolo is very clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.55.213 (talk) 04:04, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

That is the stupidest comment I have ever read in my life, how can Colombian Spanish, out of all the different countries that speak Spanish in the world be the “best”, the best Spanish is spoken by the most well educated people in any country, and Colombia is certainly not that country, other than Colombians who say it all the time just to make themselves feel better because they have nothing going for them, I have never seen any real evidence that Colombians speak the best Spanish, I’ve hear Colombians speak, and I find the accent rather flat, similar to how American English is kind of flat, which does not appeal to me in any way, Colombian Spanish is not that great. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CF2008 (talk • contribs) 08:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] USTEDES/VOSOTROS

In Andalusia "vosotros" is always used, except in formal contexts. I know a lot of peolple from almeria and i've been to sevilla more than once (part of my family works there) and they never say ustedes when addressing people they know —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.232.73.213 (talk) 17:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Contrary to the article, there must be more native speakers of English (c. 450m) than Spanish in the world.


With the due respect, I ABSOLUTELY disagree. I am from Cadiz, and I always say USTEDES + the verb conjugated with the second person plural (ustedes tambien vais a venir? a mi me suena lo mas normal del mundo, picha). I have never, never said the word VOSOTROS when in my hometown. This is very useful for two main reasons: a) economy--you don't need any difference between formal and informal contexts anymore, and b) if you teach Spanish in the USA your students will not hate you for making them learn a pronoun only used by a small minority of speakers. German. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.143.167.157 (talk) 21:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Here in my country (Dominican Republic), in schools we are taught about verbs conjugation using "Vosotros" as second plural person tense, however, outside of school, we never use it, how odd can that be? Does that happens in Argentina too? I wonder. --190.166.113.121 (talk) 22:16, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
It does for formal grammar training although nobody uses it in Latin America, (at least it was taught when I studied Spanish over 40 years ago, and it may not be taught anymore nowadays, outside of Spain). -- Alexf42 22:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish is not spoken by a significant part of the population of Morocco

According to the source provided over 20 000 people in Morocco are capable of speaking Spanish. I suggest you take a look at Morocco and look at how many people live there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.99.176.206 (talk) 09:52, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I removed it. Not all that is cited stays there. I've read the citation and it was spoken by 20,000, hardly what you consider as "major". --Howard the Duck 03:43, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it would be a good idea to put the number of speakers in brackets instead of just using the word significant. For example instead of saying

Thanks. I don't understand why people use the word significant. They should just put the number of speakers next to the country or the percentage of speakers that speak the language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.99.176.206 (talk) 15:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

{{Infobox Language}}'s rules say that we should only add countries when it is a "major" language. Now of course everyone has differing conceptions with the word "major" but if the ratio is 20,000 ro 33 million and even the more laughable 2,700 to 80 million, we should just list all of the countries of the world, I bet every country has at least 1 Spanish speaker.
I suggest to use the 33% threshold for small to medium-sized countries, then using the 1 million minimum for really big countries whose populations are larger than 50 million. --Howard the Duck 02:08, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Popular foreign language in the anglosphere?

This article claims that Spanish is a popular foreign language in the anglosphere. To the contrary, Spanish is almost never learned as a second language outside of the United States.Alphador (talk) 04:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's growing in popularity in British schools and has surpassed German, after French.


That's true. In Australia Chinese and Japanese are more widespread —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.168.183.150 (talk) 15:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

US represents 80% of the Anglosphere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.159.16.79 (talk) 23:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

But the article refers to non-US anglosphere countries.124.187.228.209 (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
And 80% is more than a bit of an exaggeration, according to List of countries by English-speaking population. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 10:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Vos" in Central America

  • Has Central America changed significantly in 10 years? I lived in El Salvador for a brief period of time in the early 90's and never heard "vos". Things change with time, of course, but it seems like an abrupt change to me if it's true. JuJube (talk) 01:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if this may be right, but my Grandmother, whom is from El Salvador told me that "vos" comes from the Natives that used to live there. This may be why you never really hear it from most of the modern spanish speakers today.

Lopez7.vii (talk) 21:18, 1 September 2008 (UTC) Actually after doing some research, "Vos" comes from Argentina, recently spreading to central america Lopez7.vii (talk) 00:50, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

In some countries vos is restricted to speech between close friends or relatives, therefore an outsider won't notice it. Recently spreading from Argentina to Central America??? That's extremely unlikely. --Jotamar (talk) 17:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Morocco. No.

The new hispanic map includes Morocco. Dumb. I don't think I need consensus to change it back. 121.223.136.161 (talk) 11:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The new map needs to be changed

Why has Morocco been coloured in? Morocco is not a country that has been heavily influenced by Spanish culture. The opposite is true. Large parts of Spain where influenced by arabic culture. Have you ever been to Cordoba or Granada????? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 12:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Spain ruled over parts of morocco for a significant period of time, perhaps that is why. However I have no idea if any Moroccans speak Spanish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.82.51.254 (talk) 04:11, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

In Spain there are 600.000 legal inmigrants actually, and there are more than 1 million inmigrants with illegals aproximately. Many of these inmigrants come back to Morocco and another new people from Morocco go to Spain, then there are a lot of people that they lived in Spain, and There are many people studing spanish (almost 60.000 according to Instituto Cervantes). In the other hand, The North of Spain and other territories of Morocco were a colony of Spain in the XX Century. According to Ammadi, 2002, there are between 4 and 7 million people who speak spanish [1], mainly in the North of Morocco.

[edit] similarity to English

I was just wondering how Spanish is similar to English in the sense of evolved languages. The English article says it's a Germanic language, while Spanish is an Italic language. But there is a substantial syntactic similarity between the two languages. For example, the sentence "The shirt is red" is "La camisa es roja" in Spanish. This sentence is a essentially a word for word translation. Overall sentences I think are also word for word, with some differences, like possession ("John's house" becomes "la casa de John" but can be rewritten in English as "the house of John") and the use of direct and indirect objects. I'm actually just a student speaker, so I probably forgot some stuff, so don't get mad at my ignorance. But my point is, for two languages that are similar like that, how can they be of two different langauge categories? Eridani (talk) 06:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

English is the most Latin of the Germanic languages. For this reason, you can see a lot of similarities between English and the Romanic Languages (Spanish, French, Italian, ...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.140.163.10 (talk) 08:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
The classification has to do with historical origins. This is determined through cognate comparisons. While simple sentences are translated as you present (though es vs está is a distinction not made in English), it gets less so with more complicated utterances: te amaria sus consegros ('I would love the parents-in-law of your children'). — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 08:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
They have some similarities, as the one you mentioned, because Germanic languages and Romance languages are both part of the same linguistic family - the Indo-European languages. The Ogre (talk) 22:55, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The correct way is amaría a tus consuegros. —Preceding unsigned