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- Everyone knows that Spanish and Castillian are synonymous. What not many know, however, is that all countries from Central America, except for El Salvador, use the term, “Español” to refer to this language whereas all the countries from South America, except for Colombia, use the term, “Castellano.” In Spain, the latter is also often used to distinguish the north-central standard from other dialects, such as Andalucian.
- Modern Spanish, Mexican in particular, has quite a few words coming from English and replacing their standard Spanish counterparts in regular speech. Some examples include words like “chequear” (to check) and “clique” (click). What you perhaps didn’t know is that “carro” the Latin American word for “car” is not one of them! Instead, it comes from the Gaulish word, “karros,” (“cart”) and is older than the Peninsular “coche”!
- Spanish is the language of choice when it comes to learning a second language across Europe and Americas. With almost half a billion native speakers across 44 countries over 5 continents, it is the second most spoken language on Earth. What you didn’t know perhaps is that there are already more native speakers of Spanish than of English worldwide! By 2060, 50% of Americans are expected to be native Spanish speakers!
- With 228 million supporters, Real Madrid is the most popular and the richest football club in the world; FC Barcelona, on the other hand, has the biggest privately-owned stadium in the world! Though from the same country, the two clubs share a bitter rivalry that goes back to Franco’s days. While Barcelona represented opposition to the dictatorship, Madrid was seen as a symbol of nationalism and favored by the regime!
- Despite FC Barcelona’s notably anti-nationalist views during the Franco-regime, the stance has largely reversed in more modern times with the club president, Joan Laporta, a self-proclaimed nationalist mandating all foreign players on the team to learn Catalan! Though largely similar, Catalan and Spanish are different languages. Barca fans are typically known as “culés,” the Catalan for ass. The Spanish word is “culo.”
- Being a Romance language like Italian, Portuguese, French, and Romanian, Spanish owes much of its existence to Latin. However, what you didn’t know is that after Latin, the language that has the greatest influence on Spanish is far from European – Arabic! Spain is studded with cities and towns having Arabic names. The name, Madrid, for example, comes from the Arabic, “magerit,” which means “the place of many streams”!
- It’s well-known that Mexico has the largest population of Spanish speakers in the world, way more than even Spain. What you didn’t know is that Mexico City is the oldest city in North America, that the Zapotecs of Mexico developed the first writing system in the Americas, that the National University of Mexico is the oldest university in North America, and that North America’s first printing press was used in Mexico!
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