So, a Spaniard, an Argentinian, and a Colombian walk into a bar... aaaand well, there's no punchline. That was just yesterday evening. But it's also what inspired me to write this entry on my mother tongue: *drumroll* Spanish!

More specifically, Colombian Spanish.

-But Juan, isn't all Spanish the same? Except for that lisp all Spaniards seem to have?

Well, no! Spanish is a language with a very rich history, and a huge dialect continuum, so no, not every Spanish speaker sounds like Antonio Banderas (that'd be cool though!) just like not every English speaker sounds like Benedict Cumberbatch

So, where does Spanish come from?



You guessed it, Spain! Spanish developed as a form of Vulgar Latin in the regions of Castilla and Andalusia during the middle ages. As you might know, the Moors occupied Spain for a long period of time, which resulted in an enormous cultural exchange, today represented by the Spanish language having around 4,000 words with a Mozarabic origin, (Almohada, Ojalá, Azucar, etc). This cultural exchange also left as architectural wonders such as Segovia's Alcazar, or Granada's Alhambra.



And it's just to be expected, that when a language is exposed to another one for such an extended period of time, loan-words start showing up here and there, think of the relationship between French and English, you'd have a hard time speaking English without words with French roots (Read up on Anglish, it's an attempt at representing a French-less English language)

So come the year 1492 a certain Cristopher Colombus takes a Spanish fleet looking for the Indias, and the rest is, well, history. Conquest, evangelisation, colonialism, independence, freedom! Or something like that. But how did this affect the Spanish language?



If you've spoken with someone from Andalusia, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that they sound like a machine-gun while speaking, if you learn Spanish as a foreign language, don's start with Sevilla unless you like playing Spanish in hard mode. I'll spare you the linguistic and phonetic jargon, but in Andalú, most consonants are basically decoration. People from the city of Granada will say they come from Graná! On some varieties, they don't differentiate between "Z" and "S" (the infamous lisp, or in this case, lack thereof) this is known as seséo. Also there's yeismo, where the sound of "ll" or "y" in words such as "lluvia" or "yo"; approximate the "J" sound in "Jennifer" as opposed to a soft /i/ vowel. Consonants are softer as well, making the language sound very musical as words seem to be connected. I could go on an on, but these are in my opinion the most important markers.

Andalusian is important because a big part of the fleet that arrived in South America was from Andalusia and the Canary Islands, and therefore our variety of Spanish derives from them.



But then more ingredients came into the mix. Mestizaje happened, Spaniards, Indigenous People and African slaves from French Congo, West Africa and Guinea (which spoke mostly Bantu and Sudanese) shared a place and a time, there were even some Sephardi Jews who had to flee Spain during the inquisition. This led to more and more cultural exchange, which of course expressed itself in the language as well.

The initial result of this can still be observed in the coasts of Colombia; if you're not used to it, the variety of Spanish spoken in the Atlantic coast is honestly hard to understand even for native speakers. A lot of the phonetic characteristics are inherited from Andaluz, but sped up. Also, the heavy African influence gives the spoken language a sound we usually describe as "golpeao" which basically means beaten up. Words are sort of punched, I'll post a couple of examples in the end so you can listen to it. The Pacific coast, which predominantly has a higher black population clearly shows these African roots through their intonation and slang.