The reality for me is that knowing two languages has opened up new worlds for me in terms of human interaction, cultural awareness, vast business opportunities, and just an expanded way of thinking.
Have you ever been to Seville? This southern Spanish city, famous for flamenco and tapas, is a favorite destination for tourists. It’s part of the Spanish province of Andalusia, which is also home to the cities of Cordoba and Granada. Did you know that Andalusia actually comes from the Arabic name Al-Andalus? Arabic and Spanish […]
Most of the time, languages tend to be named after the demonym of their country of origin. However, in many cases this results in a generalization that excludes other native languages from the same country; languages that are perhaps spoken by fewer people, but which are no less valid. Spanish is an excellent example of […]
A few weeks ago, CNN reported the results of an interesting survey carried out through Facebook in which users voted for what was, in their own opinion, the sexiest accent. While it is not the first time that this survey has been done, it can be argued that it is the one with the largest […]
A few years back, it seemed highly improbable that cable channels would modify their lineup in order to offer their content dubbed rather than subtitled. From some point in the late ‘90s until quite recently, people enjoyed series and movies in their original language, making it possible to appreciate the “natural version” of an episode […]
When reading a novel translated into Spanish, most readers hope it will have a “neutral” form of Spanish; that is, one without regional characteristics specific to any particular Spanish-speaking country. Of course, such an undertaking is practically impossible, as there are many words in Spanish that do not have a “universal” equivalent. This is the […]
Both of them are Romance languages, but Catalan—contrary to popular belief—is not a dialect of Spanish, but rather an entirely different language. In fact, looks nothing like the Spanish that today’s Spanish-speakers use. If we were to compare it with another language, it would appear more similar to Portuguese or French. The Catalan language comes […]
To celebrate the Sixth International Conference on the Spanish Language, which took place last week in Panama, the Spanish newspaper El País had writers from the twenty Spanish-speaking countries (as well as the United States) each choose one word that best represents their regional variety of the language. The result of the survey is an […]
The director of the Cervantes Institute (In Spanish, Instituto Cervantes), Victor García de la Concha, announced last week that the organization is in the process of increasing collaboration with different Ibero-American cultural centers. This initiative had already been announced in previous press releases from the institution, but now is when the fruits of this collaboration will […]
Three hundred years ago in Madrid, at the house of Don Juan Manuel Fernández Pacheco, the Marquis of Villena, a group of eight determined men met in order to attempt the feat of creating a dictionary of the Spanish language, founding an academy “to be composed of honorable individuals capable of examining and discerning the […]