This book illustrates the history and literature happening around the Spanish language as the title indicates. The most interesting part to me was the story of how the Spanish language evolved from the Latin language used by the Roman Empire. That’s because I was always wondering why there are several kinds of romance languages derived from the Latin language, not the only one descendant. After the end of the West Roman Empire, the Iberian peninsula was occupied by the Visigothic Kingdom, a Germanic tribe coming from the north. They spoke the Latin language already then before moving to the peninsula. This made a significant difference between Spanish and French, although they both originated from the Latin language. The French language was highly affected by the Gaul and Germanic languages. Around that time, the Britain island was also occupied by the Germanic people. But they did not speak the Latin language. This fact keeps the considerable effect of the Germanic language on English, unlike Spanish.
Another thing I have to note here is the profound world of Latin American literature. After the colonial era of Spain, Latin America nurtured Spanish literature, which would not have been achieved in the original peninsula, along with astonishing diversity. “Cien Años de Soledad” is too famous to need to mention here. I haven’t read any books from Latin America yet, but this fact intrigued me to “El Mundo de Hispanoamericana”. Thanks to the huge contribution and development of the Spain language literature in the Latin American world, Royal Spanish Academy, whose mission is to maintain the stability of the Spanish language, now switching the main goal to research the situation of the language all over the world instead of just defining the rule and grammar of the language itself. It indicates that all Spanish languages spoken on every continent are now equally treated as official Spanish languages, not just dialects or derived languages.
Therefore, I’m very attracted to the richness of the Spanish language’s history and diversity. These qualities motivate me to study the language more after reading this book.