- www.goihata.com
When the Spaniards ‘discovered’ and colonized the Americas, the language of Spain was still undergoing change. It was the tongue of Castile (land of castles) which was destined to become not only the principal language of Spain, but also of the Latin American countries.
As to be predicted, the native population of Latin America exerted a great influence on the Castilian language and differences between the two types of Spanish emerged chiefly due to the diminishing contact between Latin America and Spain, coupled with the use of their own languages.
The influence of American English and French was present as well as the words were absorbed with a Spanish pronunciation which was based on what was heard with no regard for the correct spelling, e.g., ‘guachiman’ (watchman) or ‘chofer’ (chauffeur)
Even though there are some differences between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish – particularly relating to pronunciation – they do not prevent mutual intelligibility because people from throughout the Spanish-speaking world can converse with each other as easily as people throughout the English-speaking world can. The differences are mostly observed in the spoken language rather than in writing, but they aren’t so extreme as not to reach mutual comprehension.
Also, while it’s easy to think of Latin American Spanish as one unit, as textbooks and lessons often do, you should note there are differences in the Spanish of various countries in the Western Hemisphere. But again, the differences aren’t so extreme that they avert communication.
If your pronunciation is reasonably good, whether your accent is Castilian, Colombian, Mexican or Venezuelan, you will definitely be understood. Latin Americans watch movies from Spain and Spaniards watch Latin American telenovelas (soap movies), so you can be assured the differences aren’t all that great especially if you avoid slang or extreme colloquialisms.
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com
Posts Tagged ‘Spanish Translations’
Facts about Spanish 2
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Facts about Spanish
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008- www.goihata.com
I love my native language and would like to share some interesting facts related to it for those of you who want to know a little bit more about our rich Spanish.
Spanish is the official tongue in Spain, Balearic Islands, and Canary Islands, as well as all the South American countries except Brazil and Guyana. It is also a common second language of some areas in the United States (Texas, Arizona, California, and Florida), parts of Morocco and even the west coast of Africa. Today, Spanish is the most widely spoken of the Romance languages, both in terms of number of speakers and the number of countries in which it is the dominant language. It is the mother tongue of some 320 million people scattered worldwide.
Regarding its origin, it is a Romance language (the roots are in Latin) which is an influence from the Moors who occupied Spain in the 7th century the regions to the north of Spain which had not been conquered during the Moorish invasion, saw the creation of Christian kingdoms which began to expand southwards and set the emancipation in motion.
Obviously, the Spanish spoken in all these countries appears with great variety. In fact the dissimilarities between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish are correspondent to those between British English and American English.
The Roman alphabet is the one in use and the Spanish vocabulary comes from Latin, though many of the words clearly differ from their equivalents in French and Italian. Also, prolonged contact with Germanic and later Arabic affected its evolution but did not threaten a decline in Romance use. Germanic and Arabic have left their mark on the Spanish language as words like ‘guerra’ – war and ‘algebra’ – math can both be traced back to their respective Germanic and Arabic origins.
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com
History of Spanish Language
Saturday, April 12th, 2008 - www.goihata.com
The Spanish language has been called the second world language, due to its large world wide distribution. It’s origin goes far back into history. Tribes, such as the Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks contributed to the early development of the Spanish language.
Around 200 BC, due to the reign of the Roman Empire and then later on during the 5th to the 13th century, due to the long period of the Muslim invasion of about 750 years, the Spanish language has been influenced and undergone further development.
Over this period of continuing tensions between Christians and Muslims, more than 3700 battles were fought, but
Some years later in 1469, through the marriage union of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, Spain became a big and influential Kingdom in Europe. The year 1492 also presents a milestone in the start of the wide distribution and influence of the Spanish language When Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castilian sent the all known Italian explorer Christopher Columbus to sea, which led to the discovery of the American Continent.
(Red color represents countries where the Spanish language is the official language)
The worldwide distribution of the Spanish language and the number of speakers: With the colonial power of
Here is a list of the top ten countries with Spanish speakers:
Country and number of speakers
Mexico 106.255,000, Spain 46.000,000, Colombia 45.500,000, Argentina 41.248,000
United States of America 32.200,000, Venezuela 26.021,000,
Peru 23.191,000, Chile 15.795,000, Cuba 11.285,000, Ecuador 10.946,000
Saroj Das
- www.goihata.com
Translation technology
Thursday, March 27th, 2008- www.goihata.com
Interesting news from one of the largest web search engines out there: they are developing applications for instant language translation to serve their millions of users around the world. They are looking for new ways to improve their site and are working on technology that would enable rapid electronic language translation using a tool that would help translate languages in real time.
Fortunately they admit that most machine-generated translation available today requires human editing to correct linguistic flaws as context ambiguities are often littered throughout conversation and written text but they consider they will soon be able to minimize linguistic editing requirements and generate rapid translation as needed by their users.
They think that their only needs are large amounts of compute power and huge amounts of data to develop real-time automated machine translation and they expect to have this application available and ready in the near future.
They are prepared to face problems convincing users that the upcoming hosted service is better than the language translation software used now as there are a lot of translation tools already and they feel challenged to build a better tool.
This is great news on the technology side! We have to develop new and powerful tools to continue learning and growing at our pace: fast, goal-oriented, efficient. We, Translators, will never be replaced by machines. We have to see these new developments as fantastic tools that will help us ease the endeavors in our challenging careers. We will be able to be more productive when we have access to tools like these as we will handle our tasks more rapidly and we continue learning a lot more too. Human input will always be necessary and we will be there to keep an eye on it and amend non human (not perfect!) automated translations!
Paulina Torres De Witt
- www.goihata.com
Translation – A buzzword to boost your business globally
Friday, July 6th, 2007– www.goihata.com
Spreading the business across the globe is the dream of every businessman whether it’s a small scale enterprise or the large scale one, the question arises what the translation means to these businessmen.
Though the English is the universal language yet it accounts to only 30% of the world population, the rest comprises of several other regional languages. So in order to spread the word of mouth a potential business always consider of marketing his product / services in a particular country / region the application of the native language is a big plus. Exporters has obtained huge profits and long lasting clients via translating their brochures / catalogues in several languages making a good market penetration.
Not only the exporters but the big corporates too are looking for translators and interpreters to spread their wings in all parts of the world.