Curso → Level 6 · Fluidez y modismos → Lección 3
Level 6 · Lesson 3 El castellano en el mundo
Spanish across the world
«Español» o «castellano», los países que lo hablan y lo poco que de verdad cambia.
Español or castellano, the main varieties, and what actually differs between them.
Escucha · Listen
Dos palabras para una cosa
In Spain we say coche. Here everyone says carro.
And you say ordenador. We say computadora.
This morning I asked for a zumo de naranja and nobody understood me.
Here it's jugo. But we understand each other anyway, don't we?
Perfectly. The words change, not the language.
Tell me, do you say español or castellano?
Both. At home we always used to say castellano.
Here we say español. One language with two names.
Explicación · Explanation
«Español» y «castellano» nombran el mismo idioma, y las dos palabras son correctas. «Castellano» es el nombre antiguo, el habla de Castilla; se usa en España para distinguirlo del catalán, del gallego y del euskera, y también en gran parte de Sudamérica. «Español» es el nombre más común fuera.
español and castellano are two names for one and the same thing, and the Academies accept both. castellano is the older name — the speech of Castile — and it wins in two situations: inside Spain, when the point is to distinguish it from catalán, gallego and euskera, which are Spanish languages too; and in much of South America, where castellano is simply what people call it, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia among them. español is the ordinary international name and the usual one in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Neither is more correct than the other, and you may use whichever you hear around you.
El español es oficial en veinte países de tres continentes: España en Europa, dieciocho países de América y Guinea Ecuatorial en África. Unos quinientos millones de personas lo hablan desde niños, y hay muchos millones más en Estados Unidos.
Spanish is an official language in twenty countries on three continents: Spain in Europe; eighteen countries in the Americas, from Mexico down to Argentina, to which you should add Puerto Rico, which is not a sovereign state; and Equatorial Guinea in Africa. Around five hundred million people speak it as their first language, which places it second in the world after Mandarin Chinese. Mexico alone has more speakers than any other country, and the United States — where Spanish has no official status at all — holds one of the largest Spanish-speaking populations anywhere.
Lo que más cambia es el vocabulario: coche, carro, auto; ordenador y computadora; móvil y celular; patata y papa. Cambia también la pronunciación, y cambian los pronombres de la lección anterior. La ortografía y la gramática son casi las mismas en todas partes: por eso un libro de Buenos Aires se lee sin problemas en Madrid.
Rank the differences by size and the map stops being frightening. Vocabulary moves most: coche, carro and auto for a car; ordenador in Spain against computadora in the Americas; móvil against celular; patata against papa; and the bus, which is autobús in Spain, camión in Mexico, guagua in the Caribbean and the Canaries and colectivo in Argentina. Pronunciation moves next — the c and z of central and northern Spain against the s of everybody else, which level 8 will explain. Then the pronouns of the last lesson. Grammar and spelling barely move at all, because the Academies of Spain and America agree the norm together. That is why a novel from Buenos Aires needs no footnotes in Madrid, and why no variedad is better Spanish than another.
Vocabulario · Vocabulary
| Palabra | Meaning | Nota · Note |
|---|---|---|
| castellano | Castilian, Spanish | otro nombre del español |
| idioma | language | masculino: el idioma, los idiomas |
| mundo | world | en todo el mundo |
| pueblo | village, town; a people | un pueblo pequeño; el pueblo mexicano |
| variedad | variety | las variedades del español |
Práctica · Practice
Ponlo en práctica · Use it
Elige un país de habla española y di tres frases en voz alta: cómo llaman allí al idioma, una palabra suya que ya conoces y una cosa que te gustaría ver. Después repite la frase de Elena: «Cambian las palabras, no el idioma».
Pick one Spanish-speaking country and say three sentences about it out loud: whether people there say español or castellano, one word you know that belongs to that country, and one thing you would like to see if you went. Then look up how your own coffee order sounds in two different countries. Learning a second word for the same thing is not extra work — it is the first sign that you are hearing the whole language and not just one corner of it.