Spanish is a member of the Romance branch of Indo-European, descended largely from Latin and having much in common with its European geographical neighbours.
Spanish is related to other Romance languages in terms of phonology (pronunciation), grammar and orthography (spelling). Of these, Portuguese is of particular importance due to the presence of Portuguese-speaking Brazil in largely Spanish-speaking Latin America. Spanish is also closely related to Catalan, Asturian, Galician and several other Romance languages. Italian is similar enough to Spanish to make communication possible between speakers of both languages. Spanish has diverged further from other Romance languages such as French and Romanian.
Portuguese is orthographically similar in many ways to Spanish but it has a very distinctive phonology. A speaker of one of these languages may require some practice to effectively understand a speaker of the other (although generally it is easier for a native speaker of Portuguese to understand Spanish than the other way around). Compare, for example:
Ela fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar. (Portuguese) Ella cierra siempre la ventana antes de cenar. (Spanish) Some less common phrasings and word choices may have closer cognates with Spanish:
Ela cerra sempre a janela antes de cear. (less common Portuguese) (Which translates as "She always closes the window before having dinner.")
In some places, Spanish and Portuguese are spoken almost interchangeably. Portuguese speakers are generally able to read Spanish, and Spanish speakers are generally able to read Portuguese, even if they cannot understand the spoken language. In fact, the number of bilingual speakers in Brazil (where Portuguese is the official language) has greatly risen because nearly every nation bordering Brazil is Spanish-speaking.
The Spanish language developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Celtiberian, Basque and Arabic, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish a?o) and diphthongation (stem-changing) of short e and o from Vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo). Similar phenomena can be found in most other Romance languages as well.
During the Reconquista, this northern dialect was carried south, and indeed is still a minority language in northern Morocco.
The first Latin to Spanish dictionary (Gram?tica de la Lengua Castellana) was written in Salamanca, Spain, in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija. When Isabella of Castile was presented with the book, she asked, What do I want a work like this for, if I already know the language?, to which he replied, Ma'am, the language is the instrument of the Empire.
From the 16th century on, the language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines by Spanish colonization. Also in this epoch, Spanish become the main language of Politics and Art across the major part of Europe. In the 18th century, the French took its place.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara and parts of the United States, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City, that had not been part of the Spanish Empire.
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