Culture of Venezuela: Encyclopedia II - Culture of Venezuela - History of the language of Venezuela

Culture of Venezuela - History of the language of Venezuela

Venezuela's national, official language is Spanish; however, numerous indigenous languages and those introduced by immigrants created a large number of dialects. The official language of 16 out of 21 Latin American countries is Castilian, or Spanish. Sixty-two percent of Latin America speaks Spanish, but only 54% speaks Spanish as their mother tongue. The five exceptions are Brazil (Portuguese), Haiti (French), Puerto Rico (two official languages: Spanish and English), Paraguay (Spanish and Guarani, and Peru (Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara). Brazilian immigrants in Bolivia and Portuguese descendants in Venezuela speak Portuguese.

Culture of Venezuela - Castilian or Spanish?

The settlers came to the Americas after Spain was already unified, and most did not come from Castile in the way we would naturally think about Spanish and the Spanish language. The Spanish government and its ruling classes, always fighting against separatism in minority language-speaking areas (Basque, Galician, Catalan, and others that have already disappeared), insisted that Spanish was the language of Castile and Spain and should only be called Spanish. From a historical point of view, however, this was not accurate. Spain's official language originally belonged to only one monarch, the king of Castile, who dominated by excessively imposing his own language to the whole country. In contrast, Italian and German appeared out of a unification of previous dialects and political unification. Similarly, like the king of Castela did with other people in Spain, England imposed its language on many people in the British Isles--Gaelics, Scots, Irish, and others. As a result, the official language of the United Kingdom is called English and not British, and the official language of Spain, Spanish, should have been called Castilian. Castilian spoken in the Americas, however, was not influenced by the dialect of Castile, which is considered the national standard in Spain. The Andalusian dialect from the south of Spain, home to the majority of the first Spanish settlers to their main exit port, Cadiz. When the Castilians pronounce "z" and "c" before "e" or "i," for example, the sound is similar to the "th" sound in English.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History of the language of Venezuela", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki