Spanish is most important to an American. Our connection with Spain is already important and will become daily more so. Besides this the antient part of American history is written chiefly in Spanish. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Spanish is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese.

Quote

• Spanish is most important to an American. Our connection with Spain is already important and will become daily more so. Besides this the antient part of American history is written chiefly in Spanish.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Mann Randolph (6 July 1787).

• This lack of social contact between conquerors and conquered, allied to the fact that the Visigoths were considerably Romanized before they even entered Spain and had even adopted the practice of using Latin as the language of their official documents, has meant that the number of words which have entered the Spanish language as a direct result of the Visigothic occupation is strikingly small.
  • I. R. Macpherson (1975). Spanish Phonology: Descriptive and Historical. Manchester University Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-7190-0788-0. 

• In terms of the history of the Spanish language, the periods prior to the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula are of minor importance. Very little in the way of linguistic evidence from the Iberians, or the Celtic-speaking settlers can be found in today's language.
  • Clare Mar-Molinero (1 November 2002). The Politics of Language in the Spanish-Speaking World: From Colonization to Globalization. Routledge. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-134-73069-8. 

• The Spanish language itself neatly illustrates these distinct levels of influence. There is next to nothing Arabic or Germanic in the morphology and structural syntax of the Spanish language, even though both languages, and particularly Arabic, contributed many isolated words and expressions to its vocabulary.
  • Harold C. Raley (2001). The Spirit of Spain. Halcyon Press Ltd.. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-9706054-9-8. 

• The Spanish language gave birth to Jewish expression in its most creative forms, including the prayer and mysticism of the Kabbalists of the thirteenth century and later. 1n colonial Latin America, important themes of exile, messianism, and memory persisted in the works of Sephardic Jews who preserved their language and culture — as well as their early Spanish influences — into the twentieth century.
  • David Sheinin; Lois Baer Barr (1996). The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America: New Studies on History and Literature. Taylor & Francis. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-8153-2283-2. 

• The Spanish language reflects the legacy of Eurasian ancient civilizations, a legacy enriched through the centuries by movements of peoples and groups into and out of the Iberian Peninsula. Spanish also is reflected in geographical names on the landscapes of the New World. From the first moment Spanish conquistadors set foot on the American mainland, they left Spanish language place names on the land (toponyms).
  • Louis E. Grivetti; Howard-Yana Shapiro (20 September 2011). Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage. John Wiley & Sons. p. 1775. ISBN 978-1-118-21022-2. 

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Spanish language at Wikipedia