Spanish Language Video Training

Spanish (español/castellano)

Spanish is a Romance language with approximately 470 million speakers, 410 of whom speak it as a first language, while the remainder speaks it as a second language. A significant number of people also speak Spanish as a foreign language. Spanish is spoken in Spain and 22 other countries including Andorra, Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, the USA, and Venezuela.

Spanish first started to appear in writing in the form of notes and glosses in Latin religious texts, the Glosas Emilianenses, dating from the 11th century. During the 12th century, law codes (Fueros) were being translated into Spanish. Spanish prose flowered during the reign of King Alfonso X the Wise of Castile (1252-84), who in addition to being the king and a poet, also found time to write an encyclopedia in Spanish called Las Partidas, which contains laws, chronicles, recipes, and rules for hunting, chess, and card games. The first Spanish grammar, by Antonio de Nebrija, and the first dictionaries were published during the 15th and 16th centuries.