Term | Definition |
el castellano | Spanish, spoken in Spain |
el catalán | Catalan, spoken in Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca, Andorra and L'Alguer in Italy. |
Cataluña | Catalonia |
Los Países Catalanes | Overarching term for the Catalan-speaking, or Catalan-identifying regions |
Euskera, el vasco | Basque |
Euskal Herria | Basque for "The Basque Country" |
El País Vasco | Regional boundaries vary, but usually "The Basque Country", Navarra, and parts of Southern France are included in this term. |
el gallego | Galician, spoken in north-west Spain. |
Galicia | region and province in north-west Spain, above Portugal |
Aymara, Aimará | Aymara, a native language of Bolivia |
Náhuatl | A native language of Mexico |
Quechua | A native language spoken across Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru |
Mapuche | A native language spoken in Chile and Argentina |
Guaraní | A native language spoken in Paraguay and Argentina |
caló | A gypsy language spoken by the Romany in Spain and Portugal |
el árabe | Arabic, an influence on most Iberian (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician) languages |
el latín | Latin, an influence on most Iberian languages |
lenguas romances | Romance Languages (languages that derive from Latin) |
el aranés | Aranese, spoken in the Val d'Aran region of Catalonia. All education there teaches Spanish, Catalan AND Aranese. |
la lengua, el idioma | language |
la lengua | tongue |
la lengua materna | mother tongue |
el lenguaje corporal | body language |
el lenguaje de gestos | sign language |
las lenguas amerindias | Native American languages (including Mapuche, Quechua etc.) |
los fenómenos lingüisticos | linguistic phenomena |
el spanglish | Spanglish |
el lenguaje de los jovenes | youth language |
la pronunciación | pronunciation |
la ortografia | spelling |
el dialecto | dialect |
la jerga coloquial | jargon |
el argot | slang |
la procedencia | origin |
prevenir | to come from |
las lenguas minoritarias | minority languages |
fomentar | to promote, to encourage |
lengua oficial | official language |
lengua cooficial | co-official language |
monolingüismo, monolingüe | monolingualism, monolingual |
bilingüismo, bilingüe | bilingualism, bilingual |
plurilingüe | multilingual |
bilingüismo aditivo | When you learn to speak a second language and it benefits you (and you speak it as well as your first) |
bilingüismo sustractivo | When you speak one language for socioeconomic reasons, but it harms your mother tongue (e.g. moving to France, speaking only French, and forgetting "how to English") |
codificación | codification, setting of rules and standards |
estándar | standard |
corpus | what a language is made out of |
educación bilingüe | bilingual education |
estandardización | standardisation |
inmersión | immersion |
inmersión a doble via | immersion where both languages aren't the first language (e.g. the child of an African immigrant in Spain has to learn Spanish and Catalan in equal amounts.) |
lengua agrafa | A language spoken and not written (usually a native minority language, e.g. Cornish before the 1970s) |
Academia de la Lengua Vasca, Euskaltzaindia | The body which standardises the Basque Language |
Real Academia Española, la RAE | The body which standardises the Spanish Language |
Institut d'Estudis Catalans, L'IEC | The body which standardises the Catalan Language |
Academia Valenciana de la Lengua | The body which standardises the Valencian dialect of Catalan |
Institut Ramon Llull | The body which provides Catalan education and promotes Catalan internationally |
Real Academia Gallega | The body which standardises the Galician language |
ikastolas | clandestine schools in the Basque country which taught children Basque during the Franco regime |
leyes de normalización | Laws passed in the 1980s declaring certain languages co-official in Spain, particularly Catalan |
castellanohablante | Spanish-speaking |
euskerahablante | Basque-speaking |
catalanohablante | Catalan-speaking (catalanoparlant in Catalan) |
ELE | Spanish for Foreigners (Español como Lengua Extranjera) |
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