The Spanish personal pronouns tú and vos

Many modern American Spanish language varieties use the personal pronoun vos instead of tú when referring to the grammatical second person. The pronoun Vos is the predominant, if not the only form used by an enormous amount of Spanish speakers in many countries. This usage is especially evident in ordinary day [...]

The aspiration or loss of /s/ syllable final in spoken Spanish

The aspiration or loss of the /s/ sound in a final position of a word is a natural phonological feature found in many varieties of Iberian and American Spanish.
This language phenomenon is marked by an aspiration or dropping of the /s/ when speakers articulate structures like los niños, las [...]

Letter ñ presence in Spanish language domain names

Last year I wrote a post about letter ñ presence in Spanish language domain names on the internet. I was at elcastellano.org/noticias website today and I read an article about this same topic, which I think adds to what I’ve already written.
The article in Spanish at elcastellano.org/noticias - by Luis [...]

Ladino: A Judeo Spanish-Iberian language preserved for more than five centuries

I’ve always been aware of the existence of Ladino or also known as Judeo Spanish, but it was only today that I managed to have a first contact not only with its written but also its spoken forms in a simultaneous way. And it couldn’t have been in a more magnificent fashion than through [...]

Read excellent posts & comments on the blog Hablas español from the BBC

The BBC website has an excellent page named Los blogs de BBC Mundo. Obviously all the blogs are written in Spanish, although some commentaries are sometimes written in English.
There are several blogs dealing with the topic of languages. The more interesting blog for me is Hablas español, because of [...]

Some thoughts about the origins and meanings of the term bizarro

Finding out about the origin and meanings of words is one of the areas of language study that I enjoy most, mainly because every time I analyze a particular term, I achieve a better knowledge about its hidden aspects. This also provides me with a better understanding of the nature of [...]

The pronoun vosotros and its verbal structures deserved to be used by all native Spanish speakers

Two days ago I wrote a post in Spanish about the personal pronoun vosotros and the verb structures involved with its usage in the Spanish language.
The pronoun vosotros and the verb structures connected with it are used in the Castilian varieties of Spain only. However, all native Spanish speakers learn to use all [...]

The lexical wealth of the Spanish language

In my long experience of teaching Spanish, I have witnessed the amazed reaction of students learning this language whenever the issue of synonyms and the abundant number of idiomatic expressions with which Spanish is endowed arises. I’d like deal in this post with the richness of the lexical or vocabulary aspect of Spanish.
The Castilian language [...]

A new Pan Hispanic Spanish Grammar to be launched by language academies

The website elcastellano.org reports that 22 Spanish language academies (from the Spanish speaking world) are meeting in Segovia, Spain, in a conference to coordinate their work preparing for a new grammar of the Spanish language.
The website adds that the planned grammatical work will be the first since 1931.
Standard Spanish is a language that has [...]

The indelible presence of the Nahuatl language in modern Spanish

Nahuatl is a language from Mexico, belonging to the Uto-Aztecan group of languages. It was the language of the Aztecs, as well as of the Pipil, an ancient Mexican people that settled in the western area of what is now El Salvador. Nahuatl has made an indelible mark into modern [...]