Spanish, or castellanoas native speakers often refer to it, now rivals English
as the major world language. This state of affairs is largely the product of
events that took place centuries ago.
By the late thirteenth century, in the wake of the Christian struggle to
reconquer the Iberian Peninsula and expand the political influence of
Castile, castellanohad spread from the north to become established as the
standard form of language in most of the Iberian Peninsula. However,
whereas cities such as Toledo and later Madrid were centres of this stan-
dard language in spheres such as public administration and literature,
around the thriving commercial centre of Seville in Andalusia, the language
developed and spread with alternative distinctive norms such as seseoand
yeísmo.
In 1492 the first written grammar of castellano was published and
Christopher Columbus initiated a Spanish transoceanic maritime enterprise
that would carry the language of the Iberian Peninsula throughout the
world, and especially to what would become known as the Americas. It
was during this process of imperial expansion in the sixteenth century that
the language was more regularly described as lengua española, the language
of Spain.
Today, the linguistic legacy of that past is more than 400 million speakers
of Spanish in 23 countries, 19 of them in Latin America. Therefore, the
vast majority of Spanish speakers live outside Spain, principally in Latin
America. About one tenth of all speakers reside in the Iberian Peninsula,
more than 102 million live in Mexico, which constitutes the largest national
conglomeration of Spanish speakers, whilst those in the Canary Islands,
Equatorial Guinea, Morocco and the Philippine Islands are also a testi-
mony to the past. More recent emigration trends have planted Spanish
speakers in Canada, and in the USA where there is an increasing aware-
ness of the social and political significance of Hispanics. In January 2003,1111
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