The language known today as Spanish is derived from spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Today it is the world's 4th most widely spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. Influenced by the peninsular hegemony of Al-Andalus in the early middle ages, Hispano-Romance varieties borrowed substantial lexicon from Arabic. Upon the southward territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Castile, Hispano-Romance norms associated to this polity displaced both Arabic and the Mozarabic romance varieties in the conquered territories, even though the resulting speech also assimilated features from the latter in the process. The first standard written norm of Spanish was brought forward in the 13th century by Alfonso X the Wise (who used Castilian, i.e. Spanish, along Latin as language of the administration), probably drawing from the speech of the upper classes of Toledo. Features associated with the Castilian patterns of Hispano-Romance also spread west and east to the kingdoms of León and Aragón for the rest of the middle ages, owing to the political prestige achieved by the Kingdom of Castile in the peninsular context and to the lesser literary development of their vernacular norms. From the 1560s onward the standard written form followed Madrid's.
The Spanish language expanded overseas in the Early Modern period in the wake of the Spanish conquests in the Americas (as well as the Canary Islands). Besides the Caribbean, the colonial administration in the new territories had its main centres of power located in Mexico City and Lima, which retained more features from the central peninsular norm than other more peripheral territories of the Spanish Empire, where adoption of patterns from the southern peninsular norm of Seville (the largest city of the Crown in the 16th century and the port linking to the Americas) was more pervasive, even though in other regards the influence from the latter norm (associated to Andalusian Spanish) came to be preponderant in the entire Americas. Spanish varieties henceforth borrowed influence from Amerindian languages, primarily coming from the Caribbean, the Central-Andean and Mesoamerican regions. Today it is the official language of 20 countries, as well as an official language of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations.
Main distinguishing features
The development of Spanish phonology is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages (e.g. Portuguese, Catalan) by several features: diphthongization of Latin stressed short E and O in closed syllables as well as open (, vs. Portuguese ) devoicing and further development of the medieval Spanish sibilants, producing (1) the velar fricative in words such as , , , and (2)—in many dialects of Spain, including the prestige varieties of Madrid, Toledo, etc.—the interdental in words such as , , and debuccalization and eventual loss of Latin initial in most contexts, marked in modern spelling by the silent ⟨h⟩ of words such as , , (from Latin , , and respectively. Also in Gascon: , huelha) early fricativization of palatal (from Vulgar Latin -LJ-, -CL-, -GL-), first into palatal and ultimately into velar , e.g., →, * → , * → ; cf. Portuguese ) development of initial PL-, CL-, FL- into palatal in many words, e.g., → , → , → ; cf. Portuguese , Catalan ) Vulgar Latin initial (from J-, DJ-, G(E)-, G(I)-) remains before , and , subsequently disappearing in an unstressed syllable (→, →, →, →, →, → vs. Portuguese )
The following features are characteristic of Spanish phonology and also of some other Ibero-Romance languages, but not the Romance languages as a whole: palatalization of Latin -NN- and -LL- into and (año, caballo) (also in Catalan: any, cavall). the phonemic merger of and , making, for example, the noun tubo and the verb tuvo phonetically equivalent (in all contexts except those of hypercorrection or spelling pronunciation) (also in Galician, Northern European Portuguese and some Catalan and Occitan varieties) spirantization of , , and → , and —not only from original Latin B, D, and G (as in Sp. probar, sudar, legumbre), but also from Latin *V, P, T, and C (as in Sp. tuvo, sabe, vida, lago) (also in Galician, European Portuguese, Catalan and parts of Occitan)