Influences on the Spanish language

Spanish is a Romance language which developed from Vulgar Latin in central areas of the Iberian Peninsula and has absorbed many loanwords from other Romance languages like French, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian.[1] Spanish also has lexical influences from Arabic and from Paleohispanic languages such as Iberian, Celtiberian and Basque.

In the Americas, Spanish is now spoken by people of a great variety of cultural backgrounds, including those of Amerindian and African heritage. The extensive contact with native American languages especially has resulted in the adoption of many lexical items from these languages, not only in local dialects of Spanish, but throughout the language as a whole.

  1. ^ Penny (2002:272-284)

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