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by Al-Khwarizmi
986 days ago
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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. |
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