History of the Spanish language

When you see them recorded in a textbook, the grammar and vocabulary of Spanish seems as immovable and permanent as mountains — but, as all languages, Spanish is much more fluid than it seems. As we’ll see, Spanish evolved over centuries of cultural exchanges and social upheavals, and continues to grow in different directions.

The history of the Spanish language is inseparable from the bloody history of the land now known as Spain — and Spain’s colonization of the Americas. Read on to gain a new appreciation of the different cultures and conflicts encoded in its vocabulary.

Spanish shares prehistoric roots with English, Hindi, & Farsi

Wheeling the dial back back to prehistory, Spanish comes from a group of languages known as Indo-European, spoken in Europe and the northern Indian subcontinent 5,000 years ago. Spanish shares this ancestor with languages as diverse as English, Greek, Russian, Hindi, and Farsi—in fact, there are 439 living Indo-European languages, spoken by around 47% of the world’s population. 

Interesting to know: There’s no physical evidence of Indo-European—not even a few marks on a cave. However, we know it existed because linguists have picked through the patterns of modern languages, and noticed remarkable grammatical, lexical, and phonological similarities. 

These language-archeologists have even created a proposed reconstruction of Indo-European known as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). 

The Romans invaded modern-day Spain and made Latin its official language

The Romans arrived on the Iberian peninsula — the chunk of land that encompasses modern-day Spain and Portugal — around 218 BC. The conquest of “Spain’s” regions and indigenous groups took generations; the Northern Coastal areas didn’t fall until almost 200 years later. 

The Romans dubbed this territory ‘Hispania’ and made Latin its official language. Indigenous Iberians weren’t forced to learn it, but many of them did to secure higher status in this new social order. However, they didn’t learn classical Latin as used in legal documents. They learned a version of Vulgar Latin — the ‘slang’ Latin spoken in the street. Over time, and with the influence of Iberians’ mother tongues, the Vulgar Latin of Hispania took on its own flavor. 

Interesting to know: modern-day Spanish is so intrinsically linked to Latin that, according to linguists like Ralph John Penny, it’s technically correct to say that Spanish is Latin. After all, languages should be expected to evolve. There’s no consensus about the point at which a language has developed into a completely new language. 

The same argument can be made about other Romance languages like Italian, French, Catalán, Romanian, and Portuguese. 

Germanic tribes invaded and isolated the “Spanish” version of Latin 

The Roman Empire declined and fell in the 4th century, and a band of Germanic tribes invaded Hispania. Most prominent among them was a group called the Visigoths. The Visigoth conquerors spoke both German and Latin, and — perhaps unusually, since language has so often been used as a tool of imperial control — they retained Latin as the language of administration. Therefore, even though modern-day Spain was once ruled by Germans, there aren’t many Spanish words with German roots. 

The main effect of the Visigoths was that the “Spanish” version of Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula was cut off from the rest of the European continent. In the 5th century, the Latin derivatives spoken in the regions of Hispania, now known as Iberian Romance languages, kept developing in isolation. 

A coalition of North African Muslim groups conquered Spain and the Latinate languages mixed with Arabic 

In 711, a coalition of Arabic-speaking Muslim groups from North Africa defeated the last Visigoth king. Their takeover was relatively fast since the new conquerors made alliances with the Christian population. In less than 10 years, most of the peninsula was under Islamic rule, which they called al-Andalus. It remained so for over 700 years. 

Like the Visigoths, the Muslim rulers didn’t impose their language on the people of Al-Andalus. Arabic was spoken alongside Iberian Romance languages, including Galician, Navarrese, Aragonese, and Catalan. 

There was intermingling between these languages, so much so that 8% of the words in Modern Spanish are of Arabic origin. One of the best-loved phrases is the interjection ¡Ojalá! which is a poetic way to say hopefully. It’s derived from the Arabic phrase inshallah, meaning “if Allah wills [it].” 

At the same time: a Christian coalition struggled for power over “Spain” and the Castilian dialect of Latin gained prestige. 

Though most of the Iberian peninsula was under Islamic rule, there always remained a Christian kingdom at the North of the country, where a version of Latin was spoken — particularly an area known as Castille. During the 11th and 12th centuries, Castille and its Christian allies fought with the Muslim kingdoms of Hispania, trying to expand their territories. In 1197, the then Pope designated these wars a crusade — and soldiers from France and Italy came to fight for Christian expansion.

Since the charge was led by the region of Castille, the Castilian version of Latin gained prominence and prestige. The King of Castile, Alfonso X, significantly increased the spread of Castilian by ordering plays and poems to be translated into it. These written documents formalized its conventions and elevated its status. In time, Castilian replaced Classical Latin as the official language at Alfonso’s court functions. This is why Spanish is sometimes referred to as Castillano or Castillian. 

Over the course of 200 more years, the Christian coalition led by Castille took more and more land, until the emirate of Granada finally fell in 1492. This period is often known as the Reconquista or Reconquering.

Interesting to know: this period of Spanish history has long been referred to as the Reconquista, but there’s debate about whether this term is appropriate. The name refers to the fact that Christian territories were re-conquered — and re-Christianized — from Muslim invaders. However, Castilians were not reclaiming lands they once held, nor were they allies of the Visigoths — whose rule they’d historically resisted too. 

Some argue it’s a valid historical descriptor with a long scholarly tradition, others say it’s propagandistic, and a poor representation of the complex power struggles of the period. 

The rules of Spanish (aka Castilian Romance, aka a local version of Latin) were formalized   

In 1475, Spain became a unified kingdom, thanks to a marriage between Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Isabella I of Castille. Under their rule, the Humanist Antonio de Nebrija codified the rules of Castilian Romance for the first time, in a document plainly titled the Gramatica de la Lengua Española. 

He dedicated his work to Queen Isabella, and handed it to her in 1492. According to legend, she asked why she needed this document, since she already spoke Castilian. As Nebrija wrote in the dedication of the book, “Siempre la langue fue compañera del imperio.” — “Language has always been the companion of empire.” Nebrija’s grammar had an explicit agenda: to promote the language we know today as Spanish above other languages in regions under his monarch’s rule, an imperial tool.

Colonizers export Spanish to the Americas, leading to new variations 

The hundred year period after the fall of al-Andalus in 1492 is sometimes known as the Golden Age; Spain became a global superpower. In this year, Cristobal Colon, Christopher Columbus, left for the Americas, the first of many waves of Spanish colonists to invade, plunder, and eventually settle countries on behalf of the Catholic monarchs. 

From the beginning, the newly codified Spanish language was used as a tool of empire-building. Columbus initiated the practice of kidnapping Indigenous people from invaded territories to teach them Spanish, so they could serve as interpreters for the Spanish conquistadors. 

It became official crown policy to teach colonized peoples Spanish, so they could convert to Christianity. Pope Alexander II gave the Spanish the right to convert non-Christians they encountered in their explorations (and to subjugate them and confiscate their lands if they refused). 

In the era of colonial rule, generations of Spanish settlers enforced the use of Spanish at the expense of Indigenous languages. Some of these languages, like Quechua from the Andes and Guaraní from Paraguay survived to the extent that they still have a robust number of speakers. However, of the 1062 living languages in the Americas, some 645 are in danger of disappearing. 

However, Spanish also picked up new words from the Indigenous languages of the countries it invaded. The words tomate (tomato) coyote (coyote), and aguacate (avocado) are from Nahuatl, spoken in Mexico; the words barbacoa (barbecue) and huracán (hurricane) are loaned from Arawakan, a language group indigenous to South America.  

At its height, the Spanish empire was one of the largest in history, covering 5.3 million square miles. It was deemed necessary to standardize the language even further, to ensure linguistic unity over such a large territory. In 1713, the Real Academia Española (RAE, or Royal Spanish Academy) was founded. Its stated aim: to “limpia, fija, da esplendor” “clean, establish, and give splendour” to the Spanish language. 

Spanish continues to evolve and diversify

Language is never static, and the Spanish language has branched into regional variations.

• In countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Eastern Bolivia, the “vos” is used as the informal second person pronoun instead of “tu”

• Chilean Spanish has 2,214 distinct words or idioms — and that’s only the official ones

• In Equatoguinean Spanish, there’s no distinction between the indicative and subjunctive moods (imagine how much easier it would be to learn!) 

The RAE continues to play a key role in shaping the language, working closely with language academies that were established in other Spanish speaking countries, through the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE). Together, they produce the updated  Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE), taking a panhispanic approach. For instance, “computer” is more commonly translated as “ordenador” in Spain, while “computadora” is preferred in much of Latin America — but both are recognized as valid. Today, the academies' efforts to codify the language favor plurality rather than a Spain-centric standard.

Internet culture is also exerting a force on Spanish. Since many technology words were first coined in English, terms including “like” and “selfie” have made their way into the lexicon. In some online communities, words are conjugated to end in “@” to neutralize their masculine/feminine endings and make them more gender inclusive e.g. “hola a tod@s” – “hello everyone.” 

Spanish changes with every generation and that’s beautiful 

The Spanish language as we know it today is the result of a Latin dialect bumping into dozens — probably hundreds — of other languages, and absorbing some of their syntax. If you’re learning Spanish, it might be reassuring to note that, as per all modern languages, the  grammatical structures and vocabulary we fight to master were forged by bilingualism.

As a global language, Spanish, like English, belongs to everyone and to no-one. If you speak it with a non-native accent or a few loan words from your mother tongue, you’re following a tradition older than Castellano itself.