The 5 Languages of Spain

if you think all Spaniards speak Spanish then think again I have a surprise for you and here is a clue what's that Spanish nope a dialect not even close all will be revealed even that one very mysterious language the language story of Spain can be an important one to know if you're planning to go to Spain to learn Spanish especially in a city like Barcelona where there are two official languages see almost everyone you meet will be bilingual and what's quite tricky is you might not realize that you are not hearing Spanish Spain has one

official national language which is Castilian Spanish and a number of dialects like Andalusian Spanish in the South but there are quite a few communities that speak another language too their own official language plus Spanish in fact if you take a road trip through Spain you will find five co-official Regional languages and each one has their own appeal and their own history do you want to hear how they they all sound well you're going to now most languages spoken in Spain are Indo-European languages specifically romance languages all except one and if you fancy a good mystery

well keep watching [Music] um Spanish is the only language that all regions of Spain have in common almost everyone speaks it as their first or second language the word Castilian comes from the province of Castilla in central Spain where it was once a dialect of Vulgar Latin the dialect that the good King Alfonso preferred so this is where Spanish originated way back in the Middle Ages and after it joined with the kingdom of Castilla and Leon it became the language of the court and the state's official language and cassilian Spanish is really interesting for one

thing it has about 4 000 words with some kind of Arabic influence you can catch that story in another video which I'll link to at the End by the way one thing you should not do is confuse Spanish with Portuguese in case it sounded obvious because it can cause some annoyance but there is one Spanish language that's a lot closer to Portuguese than it is to Spanish do you know what it is foreign they say if you already speak Spanish learning Catalan will be a walk in the park and it's definitely a language worth learning

if you're planning a trip to Barcelona this is their other official language it's actually one of three co-official languages in all of Catalonia which is this part of Spain right here can I see those beaches in the Costa Brava they're quite something Catalan is also spoken in Valencia the Balearic Isles and Dora and the French province of usion and in the town of algero in Sardinia so what's the deal well like all romance languages Catalan came from Vulgar Latin but it evolved a little differently to Spanish especially with the type of Arabic words it took

for example Catalan didn't pick up the Arabic prefix Al that we see all over Spanish nouns it gets interesting when you start reading at first glance Catalan can seem just like Spanish and then you spot all these non-spanish looking words decorating it like one uniquely Catalan word the word for dog Gus is that a word in any other language it is pretty different here are some more Catalan words for you [Music] kind of seems like a cross between French and Spanish even though some people think it's even closer to Italian Catalan has its own Survival

Story too there was a time when police put out orders like imperio used the language of the Empire The Empire language being Spanish of course but I want to say that particular fascist dictator story for later because attacking Catalan was not enough for him if you love cool stories about language Wars by the way I write these all the time like real in-depth stuff and if you don't want to miss them just click these three buttons right here and wait to hear what's next [Music] they speak Galician in that's right Galicia they've made this quite

easy really haven't they and now you know what language the girls were speaking at the start of the video did you guess right native Galician speakers are the people living up in the Northwestern corner of Spain but you can also hear Galician in parts of Leon Samora and in the western parts of Astoria Castilla so it has a pretty Broad reach almost 2.5 million people speak Galician which makes it one of Spain's biggest Regional languages now one of the many cool things about Galician is that there are about 70 words to describe rain we should

do that here in the UK now take a look at these words and tell me what they look like [Applause] [Music] if you know your geography well this will make a lot of sense Galician has many similarities with Portuguese see this used to all be one Kingdom and from the 9th century and throughout the Middle Ages they all spoke a romance language called galaiko Portuguese one of the many Latin sisters the area didn't split in two kingdoms until the 14th century and when it did the Castilla part was influenced by Spanish and God became its

own thing you want the whole story it's quite incredible actually and it's in this video now back to the word if you know Portuguese the portuguese-ness really jumps out see what I mean even the grammar is very similar to Portuguese but how you pronounce words is where time changed things the spelling and accents are also a little bit different so can galicians understand Portuguese well they can about 85 of it so I'm told I've heard Brazilians say that they understand Galician better than they understand European Portuguese which is quite interesting [Music] if you like fascinating

phenomena well you have come to the right place ever heard of Basque of course you have Basque is a mystery language from the north of Spain it has no known origin or relation to any other language in the world and it's stumped linguistic experts pretty much since forever it's a fascinating tongue twisting relic of a language wait till you see some of the words they look like where all the Exiles of Scrabble should go to fewer than a million of the inhabitants of Spain speak bask and only 0.9 consider it their mother tongue you'll hear

it in Basque country in Spain's Nevada and then a few small communities over the French border interesting also most people fluency Basque are young not old could something be going on like a Revival perhaps anyway Basque people call their language it uses is the Roman alphabet and the Spanish in yet but here's the thing it is not a romance language romance languages started with Latin but Basque Origins are way older than that I'm talking like before the migrations that brought us proto-indo-european another really strange fact is the language was almost uninfluenced by other languages around

it for thousands of years which is very very unusual in the grand scheme of thing there's more here for all of these thousands of years of people speaking baskets there were no Basque schools notebooks no literature at all as far as we know they didn't even have writing until the Romans came along with the Latin alphabet so how on Earth did the language survive so long it's just incredible like this language has special powers or something and speaking of power Basque was forbidden by a Spanish dictator from 1939 to 1975. it was silenced in the

cities and it was so bad that informants used to report speakers of this language to the police the punishment was anything from getting your head shaved to being fined or thrown in prison or you know so crazy it was even illegal to register newborn babies with Basque names and Tombstone Engravings in Basque had to be removed after Franco died in 75 things reversed and Bast flourished there were always five dialects but they standardized the language so that everyone could use it now let's check out some words strange words school is and the sound of CHA

is written t x I think they say it a lot there are also about 100 ways to say butterfly and one of them was voted the most beautiful ask word of all each word simply means butterfly and nothing more you want to say please for something Michelle wine I'm going to share this a very common way of saying thank you buy is yes but no is s sounds so unusual right also really cool Basque uses more onomatopoeia than any other language a few words did creep into English so the story goes there's silhouette which took

the French spelling there is bizarre which came to us via 16th century French and an old Basque it meant a beard a couple of other words you'll probably never use are Bilbo which is a type of sword and Chaparral that one came via Spanish so what does all of this stuff mean it means Basque is a lone wolf without a family what they call a language isolate it is one of the few surviving pre-indo-european languages the oldest language in Europe so can you learn it with enough motivation you absolutely count my friends learning baskets quite

impressive speaking of motivation if you're interested in learning a language my students seem to be pretty motivated by the story learning method which is how we teach here if you're new here I teach languages using stories because stories are the most natural way to learn any language stories are how you learned your first language that you probably don't remember do you remember any of the stories well you could learn a new language with stories too it is called the story learning method and if you're Keen to know how it all works keep a look at

at the end of the video there is a link there to a completely free story learning kit that is for you it might be the answer to your language learning who knows it will be there and in the description of the video as well [Music] foreign languages it is an enchanting Valley with vast Alpine Meadows forests beautiful rivers and lakes and an abundance of wildlife it is the Aran Valley and the people there speak iranese now iranese is a variety of a language called oxitan that used to be a really big deal in Europe in

the Middle Ages after Latin it was the first language to show up in literature poetry music dancing all of the cultural things for example this occitane book is considered a masterpiece it's full of poems drinking songs dialogues and it ends with a 100 page dictionary [Music] has an amazing Vitality for such a tiny language the interesting thing is these days there are more young people not old who can speak read and write irony just like basks and what does this tell you it's quite exciting I think a lot of people still speak octitan in France

but iranese is the dialect of it that's mainly in Spain with about 4 000 speakers it's closely related to Catalan and it used to be considered a dialect actually a dialect of a dialect until 2010 when it was declared an official language funny if you go to school in the Aaron Valley you have to learn Spanish Catalan and iranese and some schools also make you learn French and English each language gets two hours a week which sounds like a pretty amazing education to me [Music] [Applause] this is [Applause] another cool fact about erines is it's

the closest you can get to the language of the Troubadours of the high Middle Ages Troubadours were traveling poet musicians who sang songs in everyday language which was a first for those times they were a really big deal so if you want something thrilling to do with your life well get your Spanish up to scratch and then learn our news if you think that's all for Spain well think again many of these languages have dialects and pigeons and then there's a bunch of unofficial Regional languages not to mention Spain's three sign languages and the whistle

language of Silber gomera now there is one minority language I really want to show you do you know about the romanis romanis the Romani people of Spain call themselves kalei and their language is Kalo it is a mixed language from contact between Spanish and Romania over the past six centuries it's a type of paramani with Romani words and Catalan or Castilian grammar which is pretty interesting and the Romani is up in Basque Country have a different combination language Romani and Basque I am not pronouncing it you can pronounce it but that is a whole other

story that requires hiking boots and I've been warned that they have a fear of Outsiders prying into the secrets of the Romani as well so be warned as for Spanish well Spanish itself has distinct dialects like the Andalusian or the Canarian dialects and I haven't even mentioned the languages left over from the past like berber and Arabic they all have helped shape modern Spanish and guess what you can hear that exciting story in this video right over here which you should check out right now