Background:
Spanish is an Indo-European romance language, primarily spoken in Spain and most Central and South American countries, among others. It is the official language of 20+ countries and territories, such as Spain, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Equatorial Guinea. Because it is spoken in so many countries, Spanish has a very high number of native speakers, as well as non-native L2 speakers, with approximately 480 million and 90 million in those groups respectively. Spanish uses Latin script, with a variety of tildes, or accent markings, in written text.
Like many European countries in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Spain--where Castilian (now what is considered modern Spanish) comes from--has a history of imperialism and colonialism. This is why Spanish is found in so many places around the world. It is important to note the social consequences and …show more content…
One of the most important ones is the presence of marked grammatical gender on all nouns in the language, which is believed to come from the Latin influences. Spanish has two genders, masculine and feminine, marked by el and la respectively. Gender is generally assigned by the real world sex of animate entities, though for inanimate entities, the rules are slightly foggy. However, one can generally assume that a noun that ends in -a will have the feminine gender, though there are several exceptions, such as el agua (‘the water’) or el mapa (‘the map’). However, for the purpose of understanding clitics, if you are not intending to use this information to learn the language, the ability to place the correct gender on a noun is unimportant. The reason that grammatical gender is important for a theoretical understanding of Spanish clitics is that clitics are formed with respect to the grammatical gender of the entity to which is being
Spanish is an Indo-European romance language, primarily spoken in Spain and most Central and South American countries, among others. It is the official language of 20+ countries and territories, such as Spain, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Equatorial Guinea. Because it is spoken in so many countries, Spanish has a very high number of native speakers, as well as non-native L2 speakers, with approximately 480 million and 90 million in those groups respectively. Spanish uses Latin script, with a variety of tildes, or accent markings, in written text.
Like many European countries in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Spain--where Castilian (now what is considered modern Spanish) comes from--has a history of imperialism and colonialism. This is why Spanish is found in so many places around the world. It is important to note the social consequences and …show more content…
One of the most important ones is the presence of marked grammatical gender on all nouns in the language, which is believed to come from the Latin influences. Spanish has two genders, masculine and feminine, marked by el and la respectively. Gender is generally assigned by the real world sex of animate entities, though for inanimate entities, the rules are slightly foggy. However, one can generally assume that a noun that ends in -a will have the feminine gender, though there are several exceptions, such as el agua (‘the water’) or el mapa (‘the map’). However, for the purpose of understanding clitics, if you are not intending to use this information to learn the language, the ability to place the correct gender on a noun is unimportant. The reason that grammatical gender is important for a theoretical understanding of Spanish clitics is that clitics are formed with respect to the grammatical gender of the entity to which is being