Spanish is Avantpage’s most-requested language for translation services, but believe it or not, we have never done a language spotlight on this language before! This month, we thought we’d take a closer look at this Romance language, spoken by close to 500 million native speakers worldwide.
Spanish is the official or one of the official languages of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela. It is the third most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers, after Mandarin and English. Spanish is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and is the most popular second language learned by native speakers of American English.
When Christopher Columbus journeyed from the coast of Spain and landed in the Americas, his inadvertent discovery would lead to the spread of the Spanish language throughout the New World. In the following century, as Spanish conquistadors explored and conquered new territories, they brought their language with them. During the conquest of South and Central America, new forms of Spanish emerged, unique to these new regions. Today, the impact of Spain’s relentless colonization is seen in the many versions and dialects of Spanish that are spoken throughout the Americas.
Modern Spanish has a variety of different dialects, and for example, the dialect spoken in Spain (known as Catalan) differs grammatically, phonologically and lexically from the Spanish spoken in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Central America. Mexican Spanish is the most widely spoken version of this language, and is spoken by more than twenty percent of the world’s Spanish speakers, approximately 107 million people.
Vocabulary differs from country to country, with certain everyday words used in Spain translating into rude or obscene words in parts of Latin America and Puerto Rico. Spanish is also very closely related to the Portuguese language, but while most Portuguese speakers can understand spoken Spanish with little difficulty, Spanish speakers have a harder time understanding spoken Portuguese.
Avantpage’s team of translators can translate into every Spanish dialect – from Catalan (spoken in Spain), to Mexican Spanish, to the Spanish spoken in Central and Latin America, to dialects spoken in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Avantpage has a team of expert translators in place to handle documents, media, localization requests and more. For information about our translation, click here.
