History Of The Spanish Language In Latin America
The Spanish language arrived in America first through Cristóbal Colón’s exploratory travels, and then with the remainder of colonizers, at the top of the fifteenth century. At this time the Spanish language was already firmly consolidated in the Iberian peninsula. Within the “new world”, however, Spanish had however to be established, and this was done through a process labelled by historians as “hispanización”.
During this era, the southern half of the Yankee continent was a conglomerate of hundreds of various languages and dialects. Moreover, the cultures {that the} settlers encountered were radically totally different from the Spanish one. Communication, therefore, was extremely a challenge in the primary stages, and it was done 1st through gestures and shortly through captive natives who acted as interpreters.
The Catholic Church played a elementary role within the growth of the Spanish language throughout Latin America. Therefore, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries established schools where they educated and converted into Catholicism most kids and teenagers. Of course, this was all drained Spanish, and thus this language began to penetrate very little by little in the daily lives of the various indigenous groups.
The evangelization was accompanied by the slow however firm administrative imposition of the Spanish language, that relegated the Amerindian languages to an unprivileged position. This was the inevitable consequence of the cultural and ethnic cleansing imposed by the Spanish Empire to its colonies.
However, there was a 2-means flow of cultural and linguistic influence between the colonizers and therefore the colonized. This happened as a result of, no matter their dominant position, the natives of Spain perpetually constituted a very little minority within the American continent. Therefore, there was a continuing contact among languages and a progressive mixing among the various populations. This allowed the incorporation of aspects belonging to the pre-Columbian cultures into what would later become Yankee Spanish. African languages, brought by people who were taken to America as slaves, also contributed to the formation of this wealthy mosaic.
Simply paying attention to the intonation of the various South Yank Spanish dialects we will see that they’re closer to the numerous native languages than to peninsular Spanish. In terms of vocabulary, two of the most influential languages were the Mexican náhuatl (spoken by the Aztecs) or the Peruvian quechua (spoken by the Incas). These two languages were accepted and spoken by a significant part of the population, and thus they were used for commerce purposes, even once the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. Samples of words that have been incorporated into Yank Spanish from these languages are “papa” (potatoe), “cuate” (friend), or “chamaco” (boy).
On the other hand, the characteristics of the Spanish explorers were also heterogeneous, since they came from all over Spain. However, their meeting purpose before beginning their long journey was Seville, in Andalucía, the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. Since they stayed a long time while getting ready their journey, they ended up adopting some of the characteristics of the Andalusian dialect. Then they took them to the “new world”. This is often why Yank Spanish shares most of the Spanish pronunciation characteristics with Andalusian Spanish. The most significant one is that the phenomenon called “seseo”, which indicates the very fact {that the} sound “c” (pronounced “th”) is reworked into the sound “s”.
Of these factors have made Yankee Spanish the rich and multicultural linguistic variety that it is today.
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