Spanish Voice Over Agency

Everything you never wanted to know about the Spanish language

Close to the British alphabet
The Spanish alphabet has 27 letters. 26 of the letters are the same as the British alphabet with the addition of the letter ñ which you will see in a word like mañana (tomorrow).

The beginning and the end
When exclamation or question marks are used in the Spanish language, the exclamation or questions marks go at the beginning and the end of the sentence. A question has an upside question mark at the beginning of the word. So, the word for what, which is que, looks like this ¿que?

Tuesday the 13th
While many of us believe that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, in Spain it’s not the case. The unlucky day is Tuesday 13th. The superstition says you shouldn’t marry or get a boat on the 13th, or you will have bad luck.

It’s noisy in March
The Spanish love a good noisy event and the noisiest is called Las Fallas. It takes place in March in Valencia, Spain to celebrate Saint Joseph. There are five main event days and each day you will hear firecrackers and see fireworks and you’ll be woken up at 8am by the sound of the marching brass band.

Poor goat
In the Manganeses de la Polvorosa, Zamora, Spain, they had a tradition whereby a live goat is thrown from the city’s tower and is caught in a canvas sheet. The tradition was said to have begun to when a goat which had fed the poor with its milk fell from the tower and survived. When animal rights groups became involved the tradition was halted and a toy goat was pushed off the tower instead. But since the year 2000 the event has been banned.

Keep your ripe tomatoes
La tomatina is the name for a special festival held in the Valencian town of Buñol. The festival dates back to 1945 and takes place on the last Wednesday of August. What is it? It’s then the townspeople use all the ripe tomatoes they can find and throw them at each other for around an hour. You casn imagine the mess. The Fire brigade have to come and hose down the streets and buildings afterwards.

The largest Paella
According to the Guinness Book of Records the largest Paella was made in Valencia, Spain by Chef Juan Carlos Galbis with help of course! The Paella fed 100,000 people. The Paella pan was 21.5 metres in diameter and a platform was built halfway across so that the rice recipe could be stirred. The Paella weighed 32 tonnes and contained 600 kilos of rice and 12,000 kilos of chicken and rabbit.

Don Quixote de la Mancha
Back in 1605 only educated people could read in Spain. That didn’t stop Miguel Cervantes from writing his now famous novel Don Quixote. It is considered to be the world’s first modern novel and now just over four hundred years later it is still being read today.

Liquid Gold
Olive oil in Spain is known as liquid gold. Olives are grown throughout Spain, but they are especially prevalent in the South. Spain produces more olive oil than Italy or Greece. The best regions for olive oil are Jaen, Cordoba, Seville, and Granada.

Run, run as fast as you can
If you visit Pamplona in July you could get the chance to run with the bulls if you are brave. A special area is organised through the narrow streets of <Pamplona to the bullring. Between six and ten bulls are set free into the streets. The public can run with the bulls in the same direction and the skill is not to let the bulls injure you. Goring isn’t common. But each year between 50 and 100 people are injured during the run.

A short history on the Spanish language

Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in the world, after Mandarin. But its roots are modest – 600 years ago it was a little-known Castilian dialect. How did it become so ubiquitous?

The language began as a dialect of spoken Latin that developed in central-northern Iberia, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. It gradually evolved and spread into central and southern Iberia. In the 16th century, Spanish colonisation took the language overseas – most notably to Central and South America – where it was adopted by native populations and passed down through generations of Spanish descendants.

Today Spanish is spoken all over the world, and designated as one of six official languages of the United Nations (along with Chinese, English, French, Russian and Arabic).

Which countries have Spanish as a national language?

Spanish is the official language of 21 countries: Spain, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Equatorial Guinea, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Puerto Rico.

How many people speak Spanish as their first language?

It is estimated that there are between 400 and 500 million native Spanish speakers in the world, along with 60 million speakers of Spanish as a second language. Spanish is arguably the second most important language, after English, in terms of global communication. It is the third most commonly used language online, after English and Mandarin.

Did you know…

• Several different languages are spoken in Spain itself, in addition to the official Castilian Spanish. These include Galician, Catalan and Basque, and within their communities they have co-official designation.
• A number of distinct Spanish dialects are also spoken within the country, for example Andalusian and Canarian. These differ from the Castilian standard in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. However, they all use the same written standard.
• Different Spanish dialects have evolved throughout Latin America. These variants can roughly be grouped into Mexican, Caribbean, Andean-Pacific, Rio de la Plata, Chilean and Central American. Many of these dialects have been significantly influenced by Native American languages.
• The popularity of Latin American soap operas and music has helped Spanish speakers comprehend different versions of their language. All educated Spanish speakers can understand standard Spanish.
• Most non-Spanish films are currently dubbed using two separate accents – one for Spain and one for Latin America – but productions from other Spanish-speaking countries are rarely dubbed.

The Spanish economy

Despite the country’s 2008-2013 recession, the Spanish economy is the fourth largest in the Eurozone, and the thirteenth largest in the world (based on nominal GDP statistics at the end of 2013). Important Spanish industries include:

• Tourism – Spain’s tourism industry is the second largest in the world, with millions of people visiting the country each year (a monthly record of 7.9 million was registered in August 2012).
• Automobile manufacture – in 2009 Spain was one of the top ten automobile producer countries in the world, employing 9% of the country’s total workforce (after suffering in the economic downturn, the industry is now beginning to recover).

Spain is a member of the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. It is the second biggest foreign investor in Latin America, after the United States.