Comenius – Project: Train for EuropeLanguage

CEIP San Juan Bautista. Madrid (Spain)

1. What is the official language of your country?

• The official language of my country is Spanish, also called Castilian .

2. Which other languages influence your language?

• In the past the most influential languages were Latin and Arabic.

• Nowadays Spanish adopt foreign words from a variety of other languages such as:

– English (internet, email, messenger, scanner, chat, blog, camping, football, sandwich…)

– French (menú, restaurant, chef, chalet, chófer...)

• Spanish is a Romance language, Latin branch.

3. Which family of languages does your national language belong to?

ROMANCE

4. Which foreign languages do you study at your school?

• We study English in my school.

High school

school

Yes, we have funny adages :

A quien madruga Dios le ayuda (similar: The early bird catches the worm)

Cuando hay hambre no hay pan duro (When one is hungry everything tastes good)

De noche todos los gatos son pardos (No one will notice in the dark)

En boca cerrada no entran moscas (A closed mouth catches no flies).

Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo (There's no substitute for experience)

5. Do you have funny adages ?

6. Which dialects do you have in your country and where do you find them geographically ?

Official languages: Catalán (Cataluña, Valencia, Mallorca), Euskera (País Vasco) y Gallego (Galicia).

Other dialects: Bable (Asturias), Aranés (Pirineo)

7. Which are the most important writers in your

country?

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Lope de Vega

The most important writers are Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, Gustavo Adolfo Béquer, Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández, Miguel de Unamuno, Federico García Lorca, …

http://enjoyscience.wikispaces.com/file/detail/quijote.flv

8. Which word is your favourite word?

My favourite word is “CHOCOLATE”, because it means the same pleasure in many languages.

9. Which languages came along with the immigration in your country?

Languages of origin of the foreign population present in Spain are :

Language Total foreigners %

Spanish from South American

27,0

Arab, from North of Africa

14,8

Romanian 9,8 English 8,9 Portuguese 3,8 German 3,6 French 3,5 Russian 3,1 Chinese 2,5 Bulgarian 2,5

10. Which special signs do you have in your

language?

The special signs in Spain are:

The accents: á, ón, ex: arácnido, camión … The use of “ñ”, ex: Araña, España,… The interrogation question mark at the beginning and end: ¿ ? The exclamation mark at the beginning and end: ¡ !