Spanish

Spanish, also called Castilian after the Kingdom of Castile where it took shape, descends from the Vulgar Latin the Romans brought to the Iberian Peninsula. Its first written traces are Romance glosses added to Latin manuscripts around the tenth and eleventh centuries. As the Reconquista pushed south, Castilian spread with it, absorbing Arabic words from Al-Andalus and features of Mozarabic speech.

In the thirteenth century Alfonso X the Wise made Castilian the language of his Toledo chancery and of works of history and science, creating the first written standard. Antonio de Nebrija presented its first grammar to Queen Isabella in 1492.

Carried across the Atlantic by conquest and settlement, Spanish became the speech of an American empire. Its American varieties draw mainly on Andalusian and Canarian dialects and borrowed indigenous words. The Royal Spanish Academy was founded in 1713.