Everyone knows that is not entirely correct to say that in Spain they speak “Spanish” (or ” Castilian ” ) , and no more else, because each of the Autonomous Communities , has its own linguistic characteristics , and in some of them, like Catalonia and the Basque Country, it exists category language that coexists with the Castilian .
It is interesting to know them all, to realize its richness and complexity .
We’ll start talking about CASTILIAN , the official language of the Spanish state.
The Castilian is a Romance or Latin language which was formed in a region of the Iberian Peninsula , between the year 500 and the year 800/900 d. C. , like all the Romance languages , without there before , appearing in its first written evidence in glosses written in pure Latin , towards the end of X century or early XI century AD. It is therefore outrageous to say that languages that were spoken in various parts of the peninsula in much earlier times , influenced Spanish , when it did not exist yet and would take many centuries to appear.
What is the origin of the word ?
The word Castilian comes from Castile , a region of Spain , and this one from the Latin castellum=castle.
The year 1492 is key to this language. In that year the Catholic Monarchs , Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon expelled the Muslim Arabs of their last stronghold in the city of Granada . They adopted the language of his kingdom ( Castilian ) as the official language of Spain . That same year the first dictionaries and Spanish grammar books were published.
There have been many controversies over talking about Castilian or Spanish to refer to the official language of Spain and most Latin American countries. Then , the official language throughout Spain , under the Constitution of 1978, is the Castilian , so many people refer to Castilian Spanish , although there are other official languages in their respective Autonomous Communities of Spain . So the Royal Spanish Academy explains that this controversy is already outdated and is preferred to use the term Spanish.