We have already printed, according to the number of people who speak them. But not only is it interesting, it is also interesting to know the number of countries and territories where they are spoken.
Here is a list of the ten most widely spoken languages in the world by the number of countries in which they are spoken.
1. English - 59 countries
Previously, the British Empire included a huge number of colonies, and English became the most widely spoken language in the world. Along with the UK and the United States, the following countries speak English: Antigua, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Barbuda, Belize, Botswana, Cameroon, Canada, Dominica, Zambia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
2. French - 29 countries
The French also colonized a number of countries at one time African continent. French widely distributed in countries such as Andorra, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Republic of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Haiti, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Switzerland, Togo and Vanuatu, naturally in France itself.
3. Arabic - 25 countries
The Arab world covers most of Western Asia and North Africa. Arabic is spoken in Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Zambia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
4. Spanish - 24 countries
There was a time when Spain ruled half the world, all of Central and South America, with the exception of Brazil. Spanish is still spoken in the following countries: Andorra, Argentina, Bolivia, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Gibraltar, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.
5. Russian - 12 countries
Thanks to the existence of the Soviet Union, apart from Russia itself, Russian is understood and sometimes spoken as a native language in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Russian is the most widely spoken of Slavic languages and is considered the largest vernacular in Europe.
6. Portuguese - 11 countries
Portugal was once a great power, along with Spain. Even before 1999, Macau, which lies deep in the heart of Asia, was a Portuguese colony. Until now, Portuguese is often spoken in the following countries: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Goa, Daman and Diu, and even in India .
7. German - 7 countries
Germany is located in the center of Europe. Its central location, along with its economic strength and former military glory, were able to spread their language in countries such as Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland. In the South Tyrol region in Italy, German is also spoken. There is also a community in Belgium that still speaks this language.
8. Italian - 6 countries
Italians beautiful language, and is spoken even outside of native Italy. The Vatican, being a state based in Rome, obviously speaks the language, as well as other countries that can speak and understand Italian San Marino and Switzerland. States Former Yugoslavia Croatia and Slovenia have areas that also speak Italian.
9. Chinese - 4 countries
In terms of the number of people who speak this language, Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world. With a population of over a billion people, this is obvious. It is also known as Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese. Its other names are Mandarin, Guoyu, Modern Standard Mandarin, and Putonghua. It is widely spoken in the People's Republic of China and in Taiwan. It is also one of the four official languages of Singapore. Chinese is also understood and spoken in Myanmar.
10. Dutch - 3 countries
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by the majority of the population in the Netherlands. It is also used by about 60 percent of the population of neighboring Belgium and the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Dutch is also spoken in the Caribbean, and is widely used in countries such as Aruba, Curaçao and St. Maarten, as well as parts of Indonesia.
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the common name for the languages of the Indians - the indigenous peoples of North and South America, who lived on these continents before and after the arrival European colonizers. The number of Indians usually does not include one of the groups of indigenous inhabitants of America - the Eskimo-Aleut peoples, who live not only in America, but also in Chukotka and the Commander Islands (Russian Federation). Eskimos are very different from their neighbors- Indians in physical appearance. However, the racial diversity of the Indians of North and South America is also extremely high, so the non-inclusion of the Eskimos and Aleuts among the Indians is mainly motivated by tradition.The diversity of Indian languages is so great that it is comparable to the diversity human languages in general, therefore the term "Indian languages" is very conditional. The American linguist J. Greenberg, who came up with the so-called "Amerindian" hypothesis, proposed to unite all Indian languages, except for the languages of the Na-Dene family, into a single macrofamily - Amerindian. However, most specialists in Native American languages were skeptical about this hypothesis and the "mass comparison of languages" methodology behind it.
It is rather difficult to specify the exact number of Indian languages and to compile an exhaustive list of them. This is due to a number of circumstances. First, it is necessary to distinguish between modern and pre-colonization language pictures. It is believed that before colonization in North America (north of the Aztec empire, located in central Mexico) there were up to four hundred languages, and now there are just over 200 of them left in this territory. At the same time, many languages \u200b\u200bdisappeared before they were ever recorded . On the other hand, such languages as, for example, Quechua in South America, over the past centuries have greatly expanded the territorial and ethnic base of their distribution.
The second obstacle in the way of counting Indian languages is connected with the problem of distinguishing between language and dialect. Many languages exist in several territorial varieties called dialects. Often the question of whether two close forms of speech should be considered different languages or dialects of the same language is very difficult to decide. When solving the language/dialect dilemma, several heterogeneous criteria are taken into account.1) Mutual intelligibility: is mutual understanding possible between speakers of two idioms without prior training? If yes, then these are dialects of the same language; if not, then these are different languages.
2) Ethnic identity: very similar (or even identical) idioms can be used by groups that perceive themselves as different ethnic groups; such idioms can be considered different languages.
3) Social Attributes: An idiom that is very close to a certain language may have certain social attributes (such as statehood), which makes it considered a special language.
4) Tradition: Situations of the same type can be treated differently simply because of tradition.
From a physical and geographical point of view, America is usually divided into North and South. From the political - to the North (including Canada, the USA and Mexico), Central and South. from anthropological and linguistic points View, America is traditionally divided into three parts: North America, Mesoamerica and South America. Northern and southern border Mesoamerica is understood in different ways - sometimes on the basis of modern political divisions (then, for example, northern border Mesoamerica is the border of Mexico and the USA), and sometimes in terms of pre-colonial cultures (then Mesoamerica is the sphere of influence of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations).
Native American language classifications. The history of the classification of the languages of North America has more than a century and a half. The forerunner of the genetic classification of North American languages was P. Duponceau, who drew attention to the typological similarity of many of these languages (1838), namely, their polysyntheticism. The authors of the first proper genetic classifications were A. Gallatin (1848) and J. Trumbull (1876). But the classification that bears the name of John Wesley Powell turned out to be really comprehensive and very influential. Major Powell (1834–1902) was a traveler and naturalist who worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology. The classification prepared by Powell and his collaborators identified 58 language families in North America (1891). Many of the families singled out by him retained their status in modern classification. In the same 1891, another important classification of American languages appeared, belonging to Daniel Brinton (1891), who introduced a number of important terms (for example, "Uto-Aztecan family"). In addition, Brinton's classification included the languages of not only North but also South America. More recent classifications of North American languages have been based on Powell's, and South American languages on Brinton's.Shortly after the Powell classification was published, attempts were made to reduce the number of North American language families. Californian anthropologists A. Kroeber and R. Dixon radically reduced the number of language families in California, in particular, they postulated the associations of “hoka” and “penuti”. The reductionist tendency of the early 20th century. found its culmination in the well-known classification of E. Sapir (1921, 1929). This classification included only six macrofamilies (stocks) of North American languages: Eskimo-Aleut, Algonquian-Wakash, Na-Dene, Penutian, Hokan-Siouan and Aztec-Tanoan. Sapir considered this classification as a preliminary hypothesis, but later it was reproduced without the necessary reservations. As a result, the impression was that the Algonquian-Wakashian or Hokan-Siouan associations are the same recognized associations of the New World as, say, the Indo-European or Uralic languages in Eurasia. The reality of the Eskimo-Aleut family was later confirmed, and the remaining five Sepir macrofamilies were revised or rejected by most experts.
The opposition between linguists prone to uniting (lumping) and prone to dividing dubious groups (splitting) persists in American studies to this day. Beginning in the 1960s, the second of these trends began to gain momentum, its manifesto was the book
Indigenous languages of the Americas (ed. L. Campbell and M. Mitun, 1979). In this book, the most conservative approach is taken, the authors give a list of 62 language families (including some Mesoamerican families) between which there is no established relationship. More than half of these families are genetically isolated single languages. This concept is based on a qualitatively new level of knowledge about most North American languages compared to the time of Sapir: during the 1960s–1970s, detailed comparative historical work was carried out on all nuclear families in North America. This work has been actively continued during the last two decades. "Classification of Consensus" was published in the 17th volume (Languages ) fundamentalHandbook of North American Indians (ed. A. Goddard, 1996). This classification, with minor changes, repeats the classification of 1979, it also includes 62 genetic families.The first detailed classification of South American languages was proposed in 1935 by the Czech linguist C. Lowkotka. This classification includes 113 language families. Further big job on the classification of the languages of the Amazon was carried out by the Brazilian linguist A. Rodriguez. One of the most modern and conservative classifications belongs to T. Kaufman (1990).
Linguistic Diversity and Linguogeographic Features of America. The American linguist R. Austerlitz formulated an extremely important observation: America is characterized by a much higher genetic density than Eurasia. The genetic density of a territory is the number of genetic associations represented in this territory, divided by the area of this territory. The area of North America is several times smaller than the area of Eurasia, and the number of language families, on the contrary, in America is much larger. This idea was developed in more detail by J. Nichols (1990, 1992); according to her, the genetic density of Eurasia is about 1.3, while in North America it is 6.6, in Mesoamerica - 28.0, and in South America - 13.6. Moreover, in America there are areas with a particularly high genetic density. These are, in particular, California and the northwest coast of the United States. This area is an example of a "closed language zone" with high linguistic diversity. Confined zones usually occur in specific geographic conditions; factors contributing to their occurrence are ocean coasts, mountains, other insurmountable obstacles, as well as favorable climatic conditions. California and the northwest coast, sandwiched between mountains and ocean, fit these criteria perfectly; it is not surprising that the genetic density here reaches record levels (in California - 34.1). On the contrary, the center of North America (the area of the Great Plains) is an “extended zone”, only a few families are distributed there, occupying a fairly large territory, the genetic density is 2.5.The Settlement of America and the Prehistory of Indian Languages. The settlement of America took place through Beringia - the zone of the modern Bering Strait. However, the question of the time of settlement remains debatable. One point of view, based on archaeological data and dominant for a long time, is that the main prehistoric population migrated to America 12,000 to 20,000 years ago. Recently, more and more evidence has been accumulating about a completely different scenario. Among these evidences there are also linguistic ones. Thus, J. Nichols believes that there are two ways to explain the extraordinary linguistic diversity of America. If we adhere to the hypothesis of a single wave of migration, then in order to achieve the current level of genetic diversity, at least 50 thousand years should have passed since this wave. If we insist on a later start of migration, then the existing diversity can be explained only by a series of migrations; in last case have to assume that genetic diversity moved from the Old World to the New. It is most probable that both are true, i.e. that the settlement of America began very early and proceeded in waves. In addition, archaeological, genetic and linguistic evidence suggests that the bulk of the proto-American population migrated not from the depths of Eurasia, but from the Pacific region.Major families of Native American languages. The largest language families in America are listed below. We will consider them, gradually moving from north to south. In doing so, we will not make a distinction between living and dead languages.Na-dene family (Na-Dene) includes the Tlingit language and the Eyak-Athabaskan languages. The latter are divided into the Eyak language and the rather compact Athabaskan (Athabaskan ~ Athapaskan) family, which includes about 30 languages. The Athabaskan languages are spoken in three areas. Firstly, they occupy in one mass the inner Alaska and almost all western part Canada. In this area is the ancestral home of the Athabaskans. The second Athabaskan range is Pacific: these are several enclaves in the states of Washington, Oregon and northern California. The languages of the third area are common in the southwestern United States. The South Athabaskan languages, otherwise known as Apache, are closely related. These include the most numerous North American language in terms of the number of speakers - Navajo(cm. Navajo).Sapir attributed the Haida language to Na-Dene, but after repeated testing, this hypothesis was rejected by most experts, and today Haida is considered an isolate.Salishskaya (Salishan) family is distributed compactly in southwestern Canada and the northwestern United States. This family includes about 23 languages and is divided into five groups - continental and four coastal: Central Salish, Tsamos, Bella-Kula and Tillamook. To date, there are no proven external ties of the Salish family.. Wakash family (Wakashan) common along the coast British Columbia and on Vancouver Island. It includes two branches - northern (Kwakiutl) and southern (Nutkan). Each of the branches includes three languages.Alga The (Algic) family consists of three branches. One of them is the traditionally distinguished Algonquian family, distributed in the center and east of the continent. The other two branches are the Wiyot and Yurok languages, which are located in a completely different area - in northern California. The relationship of the Wiyot and Yurok languages (sometimes called Ritwan) to the Algonquian languages has long been in doubt, but is now recognized by many experts. The question of the ancestral home of the Algian family - in the west, in the center or in the east of the continent - remains open. The Algonquian family includes about 30 languages and occupies almost the entire east and center of Canada, as well as the entire area around the Great Lakes (except for the Iroquoian territory,see below ) and the northern part Atlantic coast USA (up to North Carolina in the south). Among the Algonquian languages, a compact group of closely related Eastern Algonquian languages stands out. Other languages almost do not form groups within the Algonquian family, but come directly from the common Algonquian "root". Some Algonquian languages - Blackfoot, Sheyenne, Arapaho - spread especially far west into the prairie area.Siouan (Siouan) family includes about two dozen languages and occupies the main part of the prairie area in a compact spot, as well as several enclaves on the Atlantic coast and in the southeastern United States. The Catawba and Wokkon languages (Southeastern United States) are now regarded as a distant group of the Siouan family. The remaining Siouan languages are divided into four groups—Southeastern, Mississippi Valley, Upper Missouri, and Mandan. The largest is the Mississippi group, which in turn is divided into four subgroups - Dhegiha, Chiwere, Winnebago and Dakota(cm. DAKOTA).Probably the relationship of the Siouan languages with the Iroquoian and Caddoan languages. Other previously proposed associations of the Siouan family are considered unproven or erroneous; the Yuchi language is considered an isolate.Iroquois The (Iroquoian) family contains about 12 languages. The Iroquoian family has a binary structure: southern group consists of one Cherokee language, all other languages are included in the northern group. Northern languages are spoken in the region of Lakes Erie, Huron and Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River, as well as further south on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The Cherokee is even further southwest.Caddoan (Caddoan) family includes five languages that occupy a chain of enclaves elongated from north to south in the prairie area. The Caddo language is further apart from the other Caddoan languages than they are from each other. At present, the relationship between the Caddoan and Iroquois families is considered practically proven.Muscogeyskaya (Muskogean) family includes about 7 languages and occupies a compact region in the extreme southeast of the United States - east of the lower Mississippi, including Florida. The hypothesis of the unification of the Muscogean languages with four other languages of the same area under the name of the Gulf macrofamily, proposed by M. Haas, has now been rejected; these four languages (Natchez, Atakapa, Chitimasha, and Tunic) are considered isolates.Kiowa-tanoan (Kiowa-Tanoan) family includes the Kiowa language of the southern prairie range and three Pueblo languages of the Southwestern United States (along with the languages of the Keresian family, the Uto-Aztecan Hopi, and the Zuni isolate).The so-called "Penutian" (Penutian) macrofamily, proposed at the beginning of the 20th century. Kroeber and Dixon, is extremely problematic and as a whole is not recognized by specialists. Within the "Penutian" association, the most encouraging are the links between the Klamath language, the Molala language (both in Oregon) and the Sahaptin languages (Oregon, Washington); this association is called the "Penutian languages of the Plateau" (4 languages). Another relationship, which is considered as a reliable genetic link within the framework of the "Penutian" association, is the unity of the Miwok family (7 languages) and the Kostanoan family (8 languages); this association is called the "Yutian" (Utian) family and is located in northern California. In total, the hypothetical “Penutian” association, in addition to the two already named, includes 9 more families: the Tsimshian family (2 languages), the Chinook family (3 languages), the Alsey family (2 languages), the Siuslau language, the Kus family (2 languages), Takelma -Kalapuyan family (3 languages), Vintuan family (2 languages), Maiduan family (3 languages) and Yokuts family (minimum 6 languages). Sapir also attributed to the Penutian macrofamily the language of Cayuce (Oregon) and the "Mexican Penutian" - the Mihe-Soke family and the Uave language.
Kochimi Yuman (Cochimn-Yuman) family distributed in the border region between the US and Mexico. The Kochimi languages are found in the middle part of Baja California, and the Yuman family, numbering ten languages, is common in western Arizona, southern California and northern Baja California. The Yuman family was classified as a "Hokan" (Hokan) macrofamily. Now the Kochimi-Yuman family is considered as the core of this hypothetical association. The Kochimi-Yuman languages are most likely genetically related to the Pomoan languages spoken in northern California (the Pomoan family includes seven languages). According to modern ideas, the “Khokan” association is as unreliable as the Penutian one; in addition to those already mentioned, it includes 8 independent families: the Seri language, the Washo language, the Salin family (2 languages), the Yana languages, the Palainihan family (2 languages), the Shastan family (4 languages), the Chimariko language and the Karok language. Sapir also included Yahyk Esselen and the now extinct Chumash family, which included several languages, among the Khokan languages.Uto-Aztec (Uto-Aztecan) family - the largest in the western United States and in Mexico. There are about 22 Uto-Aztecan languages in the United States. These languages fall into five main groups: Nam, Tak, Tubatulabal, Hopi, and Tepiman. A number of other groups are present in Mexico, including the Aztec languages(cm . AZTEC LANGUAGES).The Uto-Aztecan languages occupy the entire territory of the Great Basin in the United States and large territories northwest and central Mexico. The Comanche language is spoken in the south of the prairie area. Numerous external links Uto-Aztecan languages offered in the literature are unreliable.The last two families considered are partly located in Mexico. Next, we move on to families that are represented exclusively in Mesoamerica.
Otomangean The (Otomanguean) family includes many dozens of languages and is distributed mainly in central Mexico. The seven groups within the Otomanguean family are the Amusgo, Chiapyanek-Mange, Chinanteco, Mixteco, Otomy-Pame, Popolok, and Zapotec.Totonac (Totonacan) family distributed in east-central Mexico and includes two branches - totonac and tepehua. The Totonac family includes about a dozen languages.mihe-soke family (Mixe-Zoque) is common in southern Mexico and includes about two dozen languages. The two main branches of this family are mihe and soke.Mayan family (Mayan) - the largest family of the south of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. There are currently between 50 and 80 Mayan languages.Cm . MAYAN LANGUAGES.Misumalpanskaya (Misumalpan) family has four languages located in the territory of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Perhaps this family is genetically related to the Chibchan (see below ). Chibchanskaya The (Chibchan) language family is transitional between the languages of Mesoamerica and South America. Related languages are spoken in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela and Colombia. The Chibchan family includes 24 languages.Further families under consideration are already South American proper, although some of them have peripheral representatives in Central America.
Arawak (Arawakan), or Maipurean, the family is distributed almost throughout South America, in a number of countries Central America all the way to Guatemala and throughout the Caribbean, including Cuba. The center of gravity of this family, however, falls on the western Amazon. The Arawakan family consists of five main branches: central, eastern, northern (including the Caribbean, Inland, and Wapishana groups), southern (including the Bolivia-Paran, Campa, and Purus groups), and western.Ká ribskaya(Ka riban) is the main family of northern South America. (We emphasize that the Caribbean group (Caribbean) mentioned in the previous paragraph does not belong to this family, but to the Arawak. Such homonymy arose due to the fact that toá Rib peoples from the mainland conquered the Arawak peoples of the islands and in some cases transferred their self-name to them. Toá The Rib family includes 43 languages.In the western Amazon (about the same place as the Arawak family) are languages
tucanoan (Tuka noan) families. This family includes 14 languages.The Andean region contains languages
Quechuan(Quechuan) and Aymaran (Aymaran) families. The great languages of South America, Quechua and Aymara, belong to these families. The Quechuan family includes several Quechua languages, which are called dialects in other terminology.(cm. QUECHUA).Aymaran family, or Khaki (Jaquí ), consists of two languages, one of which is Aymará (cm. AYMAR Á ).Many experts suggest that these two families are related and form the Kechumara macrofamily, other linguists explain the similarity with borrowings.Located in the southern foothills of the Andes
Panoan (Panoan) family. It is divided into eight branches, named on a geographical basis (eastern, north-central, etc.), and includes 28 languages.There is a family in eastern Brazil
same (Je), which includes 13 languages. There is a hypothesis that languagessame together with 12 more small families (from 1 to 4 languages each) form a macrofamilymacro same. To macro same include, in particular, the Chiquitano language, the Bororoan family, the Mashakali family, the Karazh languagesá and etc.Along the periphery of the range, macro-same, i.e. virtually throughout Brazil and surrounding areas distributed
tupi(Tup ian ) macrofamily. It includes about 37 languages. The Tupi macrofamily includes a core - the Tupi-Guarani family, which consists of eight branches: Guarani, Guarayu, Tupi proper, Tapirapé, Kayabi, Parintintin, Camayura and Tucuñape. The Guarani branch includes, in particular, one of the great South American languages - the Paraguayan language of Guarani(cm. GUARANI).In addition to the Tupi-Guarani languages, the Tupi association includes eight more isolated languages(their genetic status has not been definitively established).Sociolinguistic information. American Indian languages are extremely diverse in their sociolinguistic characteristics. The current state of the Indian languages developed under the conditions European colonization and subsequent existence as languages ethnic minorities. Nevertheless, in the modern state, reflexes of social and demographic situation which took place in pre-colonial period. There are many individual differences in the modern sociolinguistic status of Indian languages, but there are features common to entire areas. In this sense, it is convenient to consider North America, Mesoamerica and South America each separately.Despite the high linguistic genetic density of North America, population density in the pre-contact period was low. Most estimates of the Indian population prior to colonization are in the region of 1 million. Indian tribes, as a rule, did not number more than a few thousand people. This situation has been preserved to the present day: the Indians are a very small minority in the USA and Canada. However, there are several tribes, the number of which is measured in tens of thousands - Navajo, Dakota, Cree, Ojibwa, Cherokee. Many other tribes within 18
20th century completely disappeared (as a result of genocide, epidemics, assimilation) or remained as ethnic groups but lost their language. According to the data of A. Goddard (based, in turn, on the information of M. Krauss, B. Grimes and others), 46 Indian and Eskimo-Aleut languages have been preserved in North America, which continue to be assimilated by a fairly large number of children as native ones. In addition, there are 91 languages spoken by a fairly large number of adults and 72 languages spoken only by a few older people. About 120 more languages that were somehow registered have disappeared. Almost all North American Indians speak English (or French or Spanish). In the last one or two decades, in a number of places in the United States and Canada, Indians and linguists have made vigorous efforts to revive indigenous languages.The densely populated empires of the Maya and Aztecs were destroyed by the conquistadors, but the descendants of these empires number in the hundreds of thousands. These are the Masawa languages (250-400 thousand, Otomanguean family, Mexico), East Huastec Nahuatl (more than 400 thousand, Uto-Aztecan family, Mexico), Mayan Kekchi languages \u200b\u200b(280 thousand, Guatemala), West Central Quiche ( more than 350 thousand, Guatemala), Yucatec (500 thousand, Mexico). The average number of Mesoamerican speakers is an order of magnitude higher than in North America.
In South America language situation extremely polarized. On the one hand, the vast majority of languages have a very small number of speakers - several thousand, hundreds or even tens of people. Many languages have disappeared, and this process is not slowing down. So, in most of the largest language families, from a quarter to a half of the languages \u200b\u200bis already extinct. However, the population speaking indigenous languages is estimated at between 11 and 15 million people. This is due to the fact that several South American languages became interethnic for entire groups of Indian tribes, and subsequently - a means of self-identification of the Indians (regardless of their specific ethnic background) or even entire countries. As a result, in a number of states, Indian languages acquired official status.
(cm. QUECHUA; AYMARA; GUARANI).Typological features. With all the genetic diversity of American languages, it is obvious that generalizations regarding structural features very few of these languages can be made. Most often, as a constitutive feature of the "American" language type,polysynthetism , i.e. a large number of morphemes per word on average (compared to the interlingual "standard"). Polysynthetism is not a characteristic of any words, but only of verbs. The essence of this grammatical phenomenon lies in the fact that many meanings, often expressed in the languages of the world as part of names and service parts of speech, are expressed in polysynthetic languages as part of a verb. The result is long verb forms containing many morphemes, and other sentence components are not as obligatory as in European-type languages (Boas spoke of the "sentence-word" in North American languages). Sapir led next example verb form from Californian yana (Sapir 1929/Sapir 1993: 414): yabanaumawildjigummaha"nigi "may we, each [of us], really move west across the stream." The structure of this form is: ya-(several.people.moving ); banauma- (everything); wil- (through); dji- (to the west); gumma- (really); ha "- (let); nigi (we). In the Iroquoian Mohawk language, the word ionsahahneküntsienhte" means "he scooped up water again" (an example from the work of M. Mitun). The morpheme analysis of this word is as follows: i- (through); ons- (again); a- (past); ha- (male unit agent); hnek- (liquid);ó ntsien- (get water); ht- (causative); e" (dottedness).Most of the largest language families in North America have a pronounced tendency towards polysyntheticism - Na-Dene, Algonquian, Iroquois, Siouan, Caddoan, Mayan. Some other families, especially in Western and southern parts continent, closer to the typological average and are characterized by moderate synthetism. Polysyntheticism is also characteristic of many South American languages.
One of the main aspects of polysynthetism is the presence of indicators of arguments in the verb; such is the morpheme -nigi "we" in yana and ha- "he" in mohawk. These indicators encode not only internal signs the arguments themselves (person, number, gender), but also their role in predication (agent, patient, etc.). Thus, role meanings, which in languages like Russian are expressed as cases in the composition of names, in polysynthetic languages are expressed in the composition of the verb. J. Nichols formulated an important typological opposition of vertex/dependency marking: if in a language like Russian, role relations are marked on dependent elements (names), then in a language like Mohawk - on the vertex element (verb). Argument indicators in a verb are traditionally interpreted in American studies as pronouns incorporated into the verb. To describe this phenomenon, Jelinek proposed the concept of "pronominal arguments": in languages of this type the true arguments of the verb are not independent nominal word forms, but related pronominal morphemes in the composition of the verb. Nominal word forms in this case are considered as "applications" (adjuncts) to pronominal arguments. Many Indian languages are characterized by the incorporation into the verb not only of pronominal morphemes, but also of nominal roots, especially those corresponding to the semantic roles of patient and place.
On the material of the Indian languages, the active construction of the sentence was discovered for the first time. Activity is a phenomenon alternative to ergativity and accusativity
(cm . TYPOLOGY LINGUISTIC).In the active construction, both the agent and the patient are encoded regardless of the transitivity of the verb. The active model is typical, in particular, for such language families as Pomoan, Siouan, Caddoan, Iroquoian, Muscogean, Keres, etc. in North America, and for the Tupian languages in South America. The concept of languages of the active system, which belongs to G.A. Klimov, is largely built on the data of Indian languages.Indian languages significantly influenced the development of word order typology. In studies of basic word order, data from South American languages are constantly cited to illustrate rare orders. So, in to
á In the Rib language of Khishkaryan, according to the description of D. Derbyshire, the basic order is “object - predicate - subject” (a rarity in the languages of the world). The material of the Indian languages also played an important role in the development of the typology of the pragmatic word order. For example, R. Tomlin and R. Rhodes found that in the Algonquian language, Ojibwa is the most neutral order the opposite of what is common in European languages: thematic information comes after the non-thematic one. M. Mitun, relying on the material of polysynthetic languages with pronominal arguments, suggested not to consider the basic order as a universally applicable characteristic; indeed, if noun phrases are only applications to pronominal arguments, then their order should hardly be considered an important characteristic of the language.Another feature of a number of Indian languages is the opposition between the proximal (near) and obviative (distant) third person. The best-known system of this type is found in the Algonquian languages. Nominal phrases are explicitly marked as referring to a proximal or obviative person; this choice is made on discursive grounds - a person who is known or close to the speaker is usually chosen as proximative. Further, on the basis of the difference between two third persons in a number of Indian languages, the grammatical category of the inverse is built. So, in the Algonquian languages, there is a personal hierarchy: 1st, 2nd person > 3rd proximal person > 3rd obviative person. In transitive predications, the agent may be higher than the patient in this hierarchy, and then the verb is marked as a direct form, and if the agent is lower than the patient, then the verb is marked as inverse.
Andrey Kibrik LITERATURE Berezkin Yu.E., Borodatova A.A., Istomin A.A., Kibrik A.A.Indian languages . - In the book: American ethnology. Tutorial(in the press)Klimov G.A. Typology of active languages . M., 1977
There are about 7,469 languages in the world in 2015. But which one is the most common among them? According to the well-known Ethnologue, which is developed and published in print and in electronic format international non-profit organization SIL International, the list of the most widely spoken languages in the world (by the number of speakers) is as follows.
Malay
Malay (including Indonesian) is a language that includes several related languages spoken on the island of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, in the coastal regions of the island of Borneo, Indonesia and Thailand. He speaks on it 210 million Human. It is the official language of Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and one of the four official languages of Singapore, as well as a working language in the Philippines and East Timor.
Bengali is the ninth most spoken language in the world. It is the official language of the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. It is spoken in parts of the Indian states of Jharkhand, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is the second most spoken language in India. Total speaking in the world - 210 million Human.
French is the official language of France and 28 other countries (Belgium, Burundi, Guinea, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Republic of the Congo, Vanuatu, Senegal, etc.), which is spoken by about 220 million Human. It is the official and administrative language of many communities and international organizations such as the European Union (one of the six official languages), the International Olympic Committee, the United Nations and others.
Portuguese is the language spoken more than 250 million people living in Portugal and former Portuguese colonies: Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Sao Tome, Principe, East Timor and Macau. In all these countries, it is the official language. Also common in the United States of America, France, South Africa, Bermuda, the Netherlands, Barbados and Ireland. It is one of the official languages of the European Union and other international organizations.
Russian is the official language of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Widely distributed in Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia. To a lesser extent in the countries that were part of the Soviet Union. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations and the most widely spoken language in Europe. All over the world speaks Russian 290 million Human.
Hindi is the official language of India and Fiji and is spoken 380 million people, mainly in central and northern regions India. In the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and the capital Delhi, Hindi is the official language. government controlled and the main language of instruction in schools. It is also found in Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Suriname, the Republic of Mauritius and the Caribbean.
4th place in the ranking of the most popular languages the world takes Arabic. It is the official language of all Arab countries, as well as Israel, Chad, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, the Comoros and the unrecognized state of Somaliland. It is spoken all over the world 490 million Human. Classical Arabic (the language of the Quran) is the liturgical language of 1.6 billion Muslims and one of the official languages of the United Nations.
Spanish or Castilian is a language that originated in the medieval kingdom of Castile in the territory modern Spain and spread during the Age of Discovery primarily in the Americas, as well as in parts of Africa and Asia. It is the official language of Spain and 20 other countries (Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Cuba, Panama, Peru, etc.). The only people in the world who speak Spanish 517 million people. It is also used as an official and working language by many international organizations, including the European Union, the UN, the Union of South American Nations, etc.
English is the official language of Great Britain, the USA, Ireland, Canada, Malta, Australia, New Zealand, as well as some Asian countries. It is widely distributed in parts of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. In total, English is the official language of almost 60 sovereign states and many global and regional international organizations. The total number of speakers in the world is 840 million Human.
The most widely spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese, known as Putonghua or Mandarin, a speech that combines Chinese dialects and is spoken in the north and southwest of China. It is the official language of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore. In addition, it is common in places where the Chinese diaspora lives: in Malaysia, Mozambique, Mongolia, the Asian part of Russia, Singapore, the USA, Taiwan and Thailand. According to the Ethnologue handbook on given language they say 1.030 million people.
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October 20 at the Ivan Turgenev Library-Reading Room with a lecture on the topic “ Genealogical classification Languages of North America: Problems and Prospects” was presented by a linguist, candidate philological sciences, Associate Professor of the Sector of Comparative Studies of the Institute oriental cultures and Antiquity RSUH; senior researcher Laboratory of Oriental Studies and Comparative Historical Linguistics, School of Contemporary Humanitarian Research, Institute of Social Sciences, RANEPA Mikhail Zhivlov. His speech was the second lecture in the new series of lectures "Polit.ru" on modern historical linguistics.
The diversity of North American languages is very large. Among them are several dozen independent languages families and isolate languages. If we list only large generally recognized language families, then there will be at least eleven of them. First, this Eskimo-Aleut languages, some of which are also found in Eurasia. Moving further south, we meet the language family on the day. It is distributed in Alaska, in the northwestern part of Canada, some of its branches penetrated the Pacific coast of the United States, and some even reached the southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico, where the Navajo language, which is part of this family, is widespread. Algonquian family common in eastern and central parts Canada, and the Great Lakes region and in the northern part of the Atlantic coast of the United States. Two languages of this family (Wiyot and Yurok), having done a long way, ended up in California (we previously talked about the Yurok language in). The original homeland of the Algonquian family, apparently, was in the area of \u200b\u200bwhat is now Oregon, and then their carriers migrated east.
language family Sioux distributed over the space from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Saskatchewan River in the north to the Arkansas River in the south, its ancestral home, apparently, was located on east coast USA. The languages of the family are also found in the Great Plains. caddo(Chinese, Arikara, Pawnee and Caddo proper). Family language speakers muskogee(Today, Alabama, Koasati, Creek, Mikasuki, Chickasaw, and Choctaw languages have survived) live in the southeastern United States, in the states of Missouri and Alabama. Homeland vast Uto-Aztec family, apparently, was the southwest of the United States, from where their carriers penetrated into the Great Basin region, and some (Comanches) - further, to the Great Plains. Another branch of the same family spread south, reaching Mexico and Honduras. Their most famous representative is classical Nahuatl, which served as the main language of the Aztec state before the Spanish invasion.
Family languages spoken in Mexico and Guatemala Mayan They now number about forty. The languages of the family are also spoken in southern Mexico. mihe-soke. It is assumed that the Olmecs, the creators of the first developed civilization in Mexico, were the speakers of these languages in antiquity. Possibly related to the Mihe-Soke languages Totonac language family. Finally, also in the south of Mexico there is also Oto-Mang family languages, earlier its representatives were also distributed to the south, in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. This family is remarkable in that the predicted date of its collapse is the oldest of the generally recognized language families in North America. So the Oto-Mang family is not inferior in age, for example, to the Indo-European.
Recall that only the largest and generally recognized families are listed above, but in fact there are even more independent families or individual languages for which kinship with no one has been established. The Pacific coast of the United States is particularly diverse in this respect. According to the Glottologist website, there are 42 separate language families and 31 isolate languages in North America (not counting languages brought by Europeans). That is, the genetic diversity of languages in North America is greater than in Eurasia (26 families and 12 isolates according to the same site), Australia (23 families and 9 isolates) or Africa (34 families and 17 isolates). This situation is quite remarkable, given that America was settled later than other continents.
The first scientific classification of the languages of North America was proposed by the Bureau of American Ethnology in late XIX century under the leadership of John Wesley Powell (1834 - 1902). It was based on a comparison of the vocabulary lists collected by the researchers, without using strict methods comparative historical linguistics, but only on the basis of an intuitively estimated similarity. As a result, Powell and his collaborators divided the 632 languages surveyed into 42 independent families plus 31 isolated language.
In the future, scientists have repeatedly tried to reduce such a number of families to a smaller number of larger language associations. In particular, Alfred Kroeber (1876 - 1960) and Roland Dixon (1875 - 1930) worked with the Indian languages of the western United States, who proposed a number of hypotheses of linguistic kinship. Among the ideas of Kroeber and Dixon, the hypotheses about the existence of the Hoka and Penuti language families won the greatest recognition. Dixon and Kroeber also suggested for the first time that the Californian Wiyot and Yurok languages mentioned above are related to the Algonquian languages.
A more rigorous justification for the relationship of the Wiyot and Yurok with the Algonquians was later given by the outstanding American linguist Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939). Sapir also owns a number of other achievements in the genealogy of American languages. For example, he included in the Hoka family a number of languages spoken outside of California. Comparing the Nahuatl and Southern Paiute languages, it proved the relationship of the Uto-Astecan languages.
Leonard Bloomfield (1887 - 1949), who was engaged in Indo-European studies at the beginning of his career, then applied its methods to the languages of the Algonquian family, strictly substantiating the relationship of several of them (Fox, Cree, Menominee and Ojibwe). Bloomfield's work refuted the previously widespread opinion that the methods of classical comparative studies developed on the material Indo-European languages, are not applicable to the "languages of savages".
John Peabody Harrington (1884 - 1961) made a great contribution to the study of the languages of North America, who spent more than forty years doing field research, collecting materials on Indian languages. If not for him, many further works of the comparativeists would have been impossible, since many languages \u200b\u200bdisappeared completely and there would simply be no way to establish family ties. required material. Numerous dictionaries and grammars have already been published on the basis of Harrington's data, and their full publication will take decades to come.
In 1929, Edward Sapir published an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica entitled "Languages of Central and North America", where he tried to reduce the number of language families on the continent from a few dozen to just six: Eskimo-Aleut, Algonquian-Wakash, Na-Dene, Penuti, Hoka Sioux, Aztec-Tanoan. It should be remembered that Sapir directly indicated the preliminary nature of his classification and well shared the proven hypotheses (for example, kinship within the Uto-Aztecan languages), fairly reliable (the Hoka family, Wiyot and Yurok kinships with Algonquian) and hypotheses (the Hoka-Sioux macrofamily). However, the authority of Sapir was so great that many subsequent authors began to perceive his classification as textbook and fully confirmed.
On the other hand, later, American linguists began to refute the existence of separate related groups proposed by Sapir. As a result, the next stage in the history of the classifications of the languages of North America took place mainly under the motto of "splitterism" - the splitting of hypothetical groups and families of languages. The splitters' criticism was quite justified, since many of the hypotheses about linguistic kinship that were proposed were based on insufficient material or were unproven. The most influential representative of this trend is Lyell Campbell. As a result, in book The Languages of Native America: An Historical and Comparative Assessment, published in 1979 and edited by Campbell and Marianne Mitun, postulated the existence of 62 independent genetic associations of North American languages. In Campbell's 1997 book American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America, there are still slightly fewer of them - only 58.
If Campbell is a representative of the extreme skeptical wing regarding the hypotheses about the linguistic relationship of the North American languages, then Joseph Greenberg (1915 - 2001, he could have been mentioned in a lecture on the languages of Africa) took a diametrically opposite position. In the 1987 book Language in the Americas, he divided all the languages of not only North but also South America into just three large families: Ekimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and all the others, to which he gave the name Amerindian languages.
Although it is now clear that there was still no single family of Amerindian languages, there are a number of hypotheses of kinship within the languages of North America, which show sufficient resistance to all the efforts of splitters to refute them. According to Mikhail Zhivlov, the existence of Hoka and Penuti language families is very likely, although the specific composition of the languages included in each of them is not yet completely clear. Hypotheses linking the isolated Yuchi language (Oklahoma) with the Sioux languages, the isolated Natchez language (Louisiana and Mississippi) with the Muskogee languages, and some others also have good potential.
There are several interesting new hypotheses. In the recently published book Human Settlement of the New World: An Experience comprehensive research"(2015) Ilya Peiros proposed the unification of a number of families (Hoka, Penuti, Uto-Astec, Mihe-Soke, Maya and Quechua) into a "West Amerindian" macrofamily. Together with S. L. Nikolaev, Peiros also suggests the existence of "Beringian languages", which include the Salish, Algonquian, Wakash, and Chukchi-Kamchatka languages. But these hypotheses still need to be proven.
What are the reasons for such a high diversity of North American language families? According to Mikhail Zhivlov, there may be several. First, in America there was no wide expansion of any one language family, like Indo-European in Eurasia or Bantu in Africa, which would wipe out a number of other languages. Secondly, according to genetics, before spreading across North and South America, people lived in Beringia for several millennia. During this time, linguistic diversity within this territory undoubtedly increased, even if we assume that initially they all spoke closely related languages. Then they all poured into the American continent, as a result of which the current language map. Finally, it is not at all necessary that the settlement of America took place at the same time, by a homogeneous linguistic group of people. It is quite likely that there were several waves of immigrants, and hence the linguistic diversity of America goes back to the diversity of the languages of Eastern Siberia of the Paleolithic era.
The first mention of the Spanish language dates back to the 2nd century BC and it appeared on the Iberian Peninsula and has now spread to several continents. It is spoken by more than 400 million people in different countries of the world. Such a phenomenon as Latin American Spanish appeared due to the arrival of the conquistadors in America. Then the conquered countries began to speak the language of the invaders, mixed with local dialects. It's the same Spanish language, it is not distinguished separately, but is called a dialect or "national language variants".
About 300 million Spanish-speaking people live on the territory of 19 Latin American countries, for half of them it is a second language, there is also a local one. There are many Indians among the population, there are Uruguayans, Guaranis, their number ranges from 2% (in Argentina) to 95% in Paraguay. For them, Spanish has not become their native language, many do not even know it at all. In some countries, archaisms have been preserved - words, appeals and turns of speech that have not been used for a long time.
Today, in addition to Spain itself, Spanish is spoken in Mexico, the countries of Central America - Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua. In the Antilles, there are 3 states with the predominant use of the language - Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rico. On the mainland of South America, there are also countries that use Spanish as the main or second language - Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia. The Rioplat region of the mainland is occupied by the states: Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, a lot of Spanish-speaking people live on their territory (more than 90% of Argentines speak Spanish).
Reasons for language differences in different countries of Latin America
The territory of modern Peru was inhabited for a long time by colonizers, mostly of noble origin, so the Spanish language in this country is closest to the original one. At the same time, unskilled workers and peasants lived in Chile and Argentina, who spoke more without complex turns and words, just like a worker. Therefore, the Spanish language in Chile - its Chilean version - is very different from classical pure.
In countries where the predominantly Guarani Indians lived, the original Spanish was heavily mixed with local language, borrowing from them the features colloquial speech, pronunciation and vocabulary. This option is most evident in Paraguay. But on the territory of modern Argentina lived the Spanish colonialists, and local residents, as well as immigrants, who made up to 30% of the total population. So the pure language was diluted with both the dialect of the locals and the peculiarities of the conversation of visitors, in particular Italians.
Lexical Features
The vocabulary of the Spanish language has undergone changes since the beginning of its existence, borrowing words and meanings from different languages and adverbs. The conquest of the territory of modern Latin America was no exception. When the Spaniards came here, the bulk of the population were Indians and local tribes with their own linguistic characteristics. The colonialists, in turn, brought their families, black slaves and their own peculiarities of speech. Thus, all the changes in the vocabulary that happened to Spanish on the territory of these countries can be divided into 2 main groups:
- Local words included in the Spanish lexicon denoting some features of the life and life of the indigenous inhabitants of the mainland, as well as Anglo-Saxon, Italian or American concepts;
- Spanish words that have changed in the course of life in the countries of Latin America.
A separate category of words - archaisms, or "Americanisms" appeared due to the transition of some concepts into the lexicon of local residents from the Spanish language. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that in Spain they have not been used for a long time or have changed greatly, turning into a new word.
For example, the word "pollera" used in Latin America means "skirt", but in Spain it is not used at all. This also includes prieto (black color) and frazada (blanket), which in Spanish will sound like negro and manta, respectively.
Thanks to the Indians and other peoples living on the mainland, many words hitherto unknown to the Spaniards came into the Spanish language.
- Scholars call them indigenisms.
- For example, papa (potato), caucho (rubber), llama (llama), quina (quina) and tapir (tapir) were not known to the Spaniards at all before coming to South America.
And from the territory of modern Mexico, from the Aztec language Nahuatl came the concepts used by Mexicans today - cacahuete ( peanut), hule (rubber), petaea (snuffbox). Many words came from the need to designate objects and plants unfamiliar to the Spaniards before.
Phonetic differences between languages
In the pronunciation of some words and letters, one can also find differences between classical Spanish and its Latin American version. Their appearance is due to the same reasons as new concepts - some sounds simply did not exist in the language of the indigenous people, they did not hear them, and some were pronounced in their own way. In general, the pronunciation in the American version is softer and more melodic, the words are pronounced less abruptly and more slowly.
Jorge Sanchez Mendez, linguist and scientist, describes the general sound of the Spanish language in different countries of Latin America:
- Catalan (classical) - sounds harsh and authoritative, words are pronounced hard, firmly;
In the Antilles on the contrary, all sounds are pronounced softly, speech is fluid, flowing;
Andalusian variant- brighter, more sonorous and lively;
In Mexico speak softly and slowly, speech unhurried, cautious;
In Chile and Ecuador- melodious, melodic, sounds soft and calm;
but the conversation on the territory Rio de la Plata seems slow, calm and unhurried.
The main differences in pronunciation are recorded by the Institutes for the Study of Language, have their own names and are as follows:
- The same pronunciation of the letters "r" and "l" if they are at the end of a syllable. This feature is typical for the population of the countries of Venezuela and Argentina, some regions of the states - Puerto Rico, Colombia, on the shores of Ecuador. For example, calamares in transcription looks like this -, soldado sounds, and the word amor reads like.
- Yeismo Phonetic Phenomenon- the sound of the letters ll in combination, like "y", or like "zh" - in Argentina. For example, the word "calle" is translated as "street" and is pronounced in Spain - in Latin American countries and in Argentina. It is found in Mexico, Colombia and Peru, in Chile and in the west of Ecuador, as well as on the Caribbean coast.
- Changing the pronunciation of the letter "s" if it is at the end of a syllable, this feature is called aspiration. As for example in the words: este (this one) will sound like, mosca (fly) is pronounced. Sometimes the letter is simply lost and not pronounced - from las botas (boots) are obtained.
- Seseo - phonetic feature b, found in almost all countries of Latin America and consists in pronouncing the letters “s” and “z”, and sometimes “c”, like [s]. For example, pobreza sounds like, zapato -, and entices would be pronounced like this -.
- Transfer of stress in some words to an adjacent vowel or another syllable: pais is read both in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking countries.
These are the most common differences, there are many more small ones, including different pronunciations the same word. Despite these differences, representatives of states in South America have no difficulty understanding the Spaniards and each other.
word formation
Hispanics more often than Spaniards use suffixes in words, the main ones being -ico/ica and -ito/ita. For example, platita (money) comes from plata, ranchito (rancho) comes from rancho, ahorita (now) comes from ahora, and prontito (soon) comes from pronto. In addition, some nouns have a different gender than in classical Spanish. For example, the word actor in Spain is masculine and pronounced comediante, while in Latin America- comedianta female, call in Spain la lamada - feminine, in Latin American countries ell lamado - masculine.
The same applies to animals, for which the Catalan language uses one word and most often it is male. And in Latin America, women were also added to them: tigre, husband. - tiger, female (tiger), caiman, husband. - caimana, female (cayman), sapo, husband. - sapa, female (toad).
Basically, new words are formed by using a root of non-Spanish origin and adding suffixes and prefixes to it. Common American concepts are taken as the basis, adapted to specific situation and nationality. Word-forming particles, or suffixes, are added to them, which give them a completely different meaning: -ada, -ero, -ear, -menta.
All of them have their own history, "nationality" and meaning. For example, the suffix -menta is actively used in the word formation of the Venezuelan dialect, it has a general meaning: papelamnta - a pile of papers, perramenta - a pack of dogs. The suffix -io has the same meaning for the countries of Uruguay and Argentina - tablerio - a pile of stones.
In the words picada (path), sahleada (saber strike), nicada (company of children), "-ada" has a collective meaning or denoting belonging to something. More examples, gauchada (an act characteristic of a gaucho), ponchada (the amount of things that fit on a poncho) and so on.
But the suffix -ear creates new verbs or American nouns: tanguear - to dance tango, jinitear - to ride and other examples. The Spanish language in South America is more mobile, lively and developing than its European counterpart. Here there is a constant replenishment of the vocabulary, the formation of new concepts and turns, due to the movement of the population on the mainland and the arrival of immigrants.
Grammar differences
The grammar features characteristic of Latin America have their own system and are the result of many years of language evolution. The Spaniards have a concept gender applied to inanimate objects.
In the Latin American version, there are words with the same meaning, but of a strictly opposite gender. In Spain, el color (color), el fin (end), la bombilla (light bulb), la vuelta (surrender), and in South American countries- la color, la fin el bombillo, el vuelto.
Plural endings are also systematically different in different countries: café (1 cafe) - cafes (several cafes), te (tea) - tes (several types of tea), pie (leg) - pies (feet), and in Latin America they will be called: cafeses, teses, pieses, respectively.
- Peculiarities.
- Words that have only the plural (scissors, trousers, pincers) in the South American version are used in the singular: tijeraz - tiera (scissors), bombachas - bombacha (trousers) and tenazas - tenaza (pincers). If the noun ends with the letters -ey, then according to the rules of the Spanish language, their plural is formed by adding the ending "-es", while in Latin America the ending is simplified: buey (bull) - bueyes / bueys, or rey (king) - reyes /reys.
In addressing people, the Spaniards use the pronoun "you" - vosotros, in Latin America they turn to strangers - ustedes. And the pronoun "you" sounds like "vos" in South America and like "tu" in Europe.
As a conclusion
The result of the comparison is the understanding that the Spanish language is alive and colloquial, therefore it develops, breathes and absorbs new words, concepts and phrases. It depends on the national, territorial, cultural characteristics of the people who speak it. All differences are the result of the natural process of evolution and in no way affect the understanding of representatives of different countries of the Spanish dialect.
If you decide to learn a language, then you do not need to know these features and memorize them in order to travel to any country in Latin America. Enough classic version Spanish, you will be able to communicate with the locals, and the presence of “your own” words is typical for each language, Russian is no exception. In each region of our country, there are several dozen phrases and concepts that are used only within a small area, but this does not prevent us from understanding each other, even living in different subjects RF.
