Posts tagged: spanish
“400 million persons in the world are Spanish speakers”.
In orange the countries with Spanish as an official language or one of the official languages.
Qué difícil es hablar el español (It’s so hard to speak Spanish)
A eight minutes awesome song (in Spanish with English subtitles) about Spanish, accents and rhythms.
“Chucho es un perrito en Salvador y Guatemala, y a Jesús le dicen Chucho, [..] Chucho es frío en Argentina, chucho en Chile es una carcél, chucho en México con el don de ser muy habil.”
Jour de pluie Gustave Caillebotte
Romancing the Languages | Raining (It’s)
In four Romance languages the word for Rain comes from the same origine, Latin word Pluvia: Lluvia (Spanish), Chuva (Portuguese), Pluie (French), Pioggia (Italian), Ploaie (Romanian).
In Portuguese, Spanish and Italian you don’t need a subject to say it’s raining, it doesn’t rain, just rain fall they say “Rains” in the 3th person of singular “Llueve / Chove / Piove”. only it doesn’t convey duration. to do that you have to put the verb in the gerund “Está lloviendo / esta chovendo / sta piovendo”. But it works just fine without it. In French you do need a subjet, it doesn’t exist so you say “He rains” “Il pleut”.
Notice that even when the verb to weep is very similar (Llanto, Choro, Pleur, Pianto and Planset) they came from another root: Plango/Planctus (to mourn or to beat)
Antonio Muñoz Molina, “Una provincia del idioma”
“We [Spanish] are not the owners of the language: we’re even a minority if we look at statistics. I learn it by traveling the Hispanic countries of America, by listening to the Italian musicality of the Spanish in Rio de la Plata, the classic clarity of Colombian Spanish, but I really realize it by listening to the Spanish spoke in New York, where we find a reunion of all possible intonations and accents, and where the contrast created by the presence of English and Saxon civilization make us realize all the common things that language and time gave us.”.
Romancing the Languages : About birds and pens
A bird is a pájaro in Spanish, oiseau in French, pássaroin Portuguese, uccello in Italian and Pasăre in Romanian.
In Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French fountain pen and feather are the same word: Penna, Pluma, and Plume. Which is understandable.
Stranger is than in Péna Portuguese and Italian for feather is pronounce just as the word Sorrow in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
So in Italian and Portuguese Birds can fly away with their sorrow and their feathers on the same sentence.
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English:
Pumpkin
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Spanish:
Calabaza /Zambo
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Italian:
Zucca
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French:
Citrouille
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Portuguese:
Abóbora
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German:
Kurbis
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I think I have made my point
Lo que quieres decir:
“Me ha encantado la relación tan lograda entre cada uno de los conflictos internos de los personajes principales. La relación subyacente entre ambos, efímera y al mismo tiempo desgarradora, crea una línea de conflicto bastante original en la trama. Realmente me ha hecho cuestionar mi propio sistema de valores y creencias con respecto a éste asunto en particular.”
Pero acabas diciendo:
“OMG I LVOE IT PLEASE MOORE ITS VERY GOOD. CONTI PLEASE.”
(Map is not exactly the more accurate but it was simple and clean) Romancing the Languages | Incredible Iberians
Going through the Castilian tag I noticed that some people think Spanish from Spain is called that way. But it’s not, Castilian -> Spanish. Some people think it may be a better name because Spanish is not the only language in Spain. So I thought I could present some of these other languages to you:
- Catalan (green in the map): Catalan is a Romance Language which means it comes from Latin. It’s spoken in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and is the official language of Andorra (it’s a micro-state, did you know?). Catalan is widely used in both official and not official contexts and media in Catalonia and a little less elsewhere it’s mandatory to some public job posts. In the Valencian Community Valencian is spoke ¿Is Valencian a different language? ¿A dialect of Catalan? It’s a long debate. If we count Valencian and Catalan we have around 11 million speakers. Have a sad love song.
- Spanish/Castilian (yellow): the official language of Spain and one of the most spoken languages in the world because nearly all Latin America speaks it. It’s also a Romance language. Spanish from Spain have unique characteristics i.e Andalusian accent is know for being quite strong. Have a Flamenco song.
- Basque/Euskera (dark orange): This is Basque. Omg you can’t undertaken a thing, can you? Basque is not like the others, Basque is a special snowflake that’s no Romance and probably not Indo-European. It’s spoken in the Basque Community and parts of Navarre in Spain and the French Basque region. Where does it comes from? Some say prehistoric tradition, Lovecraft say the Elders God. Anyway, it’s alive and well specially in Spain like Catalan it has an official status in it’s zone. Around 883 000 speakers.
- Galician (light orange): If i’m not mistaken Portuguese and Galician have the same origin language until the Middle Ages. Another Romance language. Around 3.188.400 speakers and official status in Galicia. Like the Basque and Catalan it’s used officially and non-officialy (there are radio and tv show in Galician, it’s some people first language, and taught in schools). Have a pretty celtic-vibe song.
- Portuguese (The one in Portugal): The official language of Portugal (around 10 million citizen , it’s also spoken in Brazil, Angola, Cabo Verde, Mozambique and Sao Tome e Principe. A Romance language it’s closer to Latin vocabulary than Spanish. European and Brazilian Portugueseare somehow different, more than European and Latin American Spanish. Have an upbeat song.
What about the other languages? Aragonese (brown) and Bable/Asturian are not official in their region and not very widely spoken even if there are projects to promote then. Not very used in media (books, songs). Most regions who used to spoke those or an ancient variety switched to Spanish with time. Have a cute ad in Asturian. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything in Aragonese.
Why so many languages? First I want to tell you that I’m doing a very short summary and I know those are big difficult issues. But very long story short: Spain was once many kingdoms and had a great variety of dialects. Those kingdom came to depend from the Crown of Castille and thus Spain was born. Some Bourbon Kings and then the military regime of Franco tried to eradicate those languages but didn’t succeed. Now most of them are official in their region. Portugal is another thing entirely it’s frontiers where definite by the XVII c. so linguistic unity happened more easily.
Hope it helped :)
Romancing the languages | The language of…
Everybody knows English is The Language of Shakespeare but what about Romance Languages? Here are some:
- Català, The Language of Llull: Ramon Lull was the first author who wrote theological texts and novels in Catalan. He also spoke Arabic and Latin, after a festive youth he converted and went to Africa to evangelize. His most famous works are Blanquerna and Llibre de meravelles
- Español, The Language of Cervantes: When Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote Spanish already existed but man he took it to its glory. When he is not writing Cervantes is not writing he als goes to battles where he loses a hand (he is know as “The amputee of Lepanto”) or is being captured by corsairs for years. He is also called “The Prince of Wits”.
- Français, The Language of Molière: Jean Baptiste Poquelin called Molière was an actor and playwright he mastered French, played with French and is revered and loved all over France probably because his comedies are great. He died on stage and left behind an incredible number of works like Tartuffe, L’avare, Dom Juan…
- Italiano, The Language of Dante: Dante Alighieri wrote Divine Comedy an doing so he not only created one of the greatest epic poems ever, he also created the vision you probably have of the Christian afterlife. He is called “The Supreme Poet” and often share with Petrarch and Boccaccio the honor of being the father of the Italian Language.
- Română, The Language of Eminescu: I was surprised and still not sure it’s true because Mihai Eminescu is so recent! He was a Romantic poet that not only use his language prettily, he also brought new words from ancient texts and regional dialect and was the most important poet of the Romanian language. Luceafărul ”The Evening Star” a huge love poem is considered his masterpiece.
- Português, The Language of Camoes: Luis Vaz de Camoes also wrote and epic poemOs Lusíadas“The Lusiads” to the glory of Portugal. He was born in an era where the tin Iberic country was in full Epic Navigator mode and he was himself in many parts of the Empire exiled from Goa (India) to Macao (China) and Mozambique and back to Portugal where he is revered to day.
Hope it helped ;)
