Names of The Language
In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called castellano (Castilian) as well as español (Spanish), that is, the language of the region of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. Speakers of these regional languages prefer the term castellano, as they consider their own languages equally "Spanish". The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. the rest of the Spanish languages). Article III reads as follows:
El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. (...) Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas...Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (...) The rest of the Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities...
The Spanish Royal Academy, on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications but from 1713 to 1923 called the language castellano.
The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms, español and castellano, are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.
The name castellano is preferred in all of Spanish-speaking South America except Colombia. The term español is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole when relating to a global context.
Two etymologies for español have been suggested. The Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, 'from—or pertaining to—Hispania'. Other authorities attribute it to a supposed medieval Latin *hispaniōne, with the same meaning.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Language
Famous quotes containing the words names of the, names of, names and/or language:
“If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Ideas about life organize perception; names of emotions organize sensations; rules of syntax organize thought. But pain comes on its own.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)