Spanish language in the Americas, also known as American Spanish, (Spanish: español americano) refers to the Spanish spoken in the Americas, as opposed to European Spanish. Linguistically, this grouping is somewhat arbitrary, akin to having a term for "overseas British" encompassing variants spoken in the US, Canada, India, New Zealand and Ireland, but not England. The point is that there is great diversity among the various American dialects, and it would be hard to point to one trait shared by all of them which is not also in existence in one or more of the variants of Spanish used in Spain. Of the more than 469 million people who speak Spanish as their mother tongue, more than 418 million are in Latin America and the United States.
There are numerous regional particularities and idiomatic expressions within Spanish. In American Spanish, loanwords directly from English are relatively more frequent, and often foreign spellings are left intact. One notable trend is the higher abundance of loan words taken from English in Latin America as well as words derived from English. In Latin America they speak of la computadora while in Spain it's el ordenador, and each word sounds foreign in the region where it is not used. It is important to note that many of these differences are due to Iberian Spanish having a stronger French influence than Latin America, where, for geopolitical reasons, the United States influence has been predominant throughout the twentieth century.
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Famous quotes containing the words spanish, language and/or americas:
“As the Spanish proverb says, “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.” So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)