[infinitezest]

This is a totally aside but as someone attempting to learn Spanish as an adult I was curious about the translation from "castellano" to "spanish" (rather than using "espanol"). I had assumed that it referred to the Catalan language but based on some searches it sounds like maybe it _can_ refer to a particular dialect of Spanish but can also just refer to the Spanish language in general. Do i have that right? Language is fascinating!

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Originally it meant the specific dialect of Castilla, a region of Spain, but nowadays the term is used to refer to the Spanish language in general. Unless you are talking about history, "castellano" and "español" are synonyms and people understand them interchangeably and use one or the other depending on where they are from. Here is a map:

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Español_de_América#/media/Arch...

I am from Galicia, that red corner in northwestern Spain, so "castellano" is the most common term here.

The division within Spain makes sense, by the way: regions that have strong official regional languages say "castellano", because of course Galician, Catalan, etc. are also Spanish languages. So when you speak two languages, both with their origin in Spain, it makes less sense to call one of them español (Spanish). Note however that this doesn't mean that choosing to say one or the other is a political statement at all (or at least, the overwhelming majority of people wouldn't consider it so), things just evolved that way.

As to why some Latin American countries ended up saying "español" and others "castellano", I have no idea, to be honest.

[evertedsphere]

castellano (etymologically) is the equivalent of the English word Castilian, which can refer to the variety of Spanish spoken in central / northern Spain. Catalan is a distinct Romance language.

As for the use of castellano for Spanish-in-general see e.g. https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/913/is-there-a-d...