Linguistic Diversity and Literary Evolution in Spain
Linguistic Diversity in Spain
In addition to Castilian, Spain also speaks other languages such as Valencian, Catalan, Galician, and Euskera, which come from Latin.
Spanish in the World
Spanish is spoken by 400 million people. It is the fourth most spoken language in the world and is spoken in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.
Neologisms
Foreign words, abbreviations, antonyms, forming new members to contribute and enrich it without difficulty.
Spanish in America
Spanish varieties in America affect pronunciation and vocabulary.
Sephardi
It is the variety of Castilian spoken by descendants of Jews from Spain expelled in 1792 by the Catholic Monarchs.
Technical Terms
These are words or expressions of concrete and precise meaning, which form a specific part of the vocabulary of science, art, or trade. The main highlights are:
- Monosemy: Words with a single meaning, e.g., hydrogen, cholesterol.
- Denotation: Meaning that designates reality without adding feelings or subjective values, characteristic of connotation.
Technical terms often have no synonyms, although some specifications exist: e.g., Dental-Dentist.
Late Romanticism
It was in the second half of the 19th century, at the height of realism, that poets from that time became known, as in the case of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro, who eliminated rhetorical exaggeration and shaped a lyrical expression based on the naturalness and balance of images, thoughts, and emotions.
Bécquer
Orphaned at a young age, Bécquer moved to Madrid in 1854, where he lived with economic straits as a journalist and civil servant. He married Casta Esteban, with whom he had two children. He had been ill since his youth with lung problems and died in 1870. In 1871, his work was published, and he achieved success and glory.
Bécquer’s Poetry
His work is on poetry and enlightened love and ends with disappointment towards love, resistance, and the melancholy of death.
Style and Meter
His poetry is rhyming, free of the rhetorical excess and exaggeration of the feelings of Romanticism. There is a highlight of its naturalness, its delicacy, and sincerity in the expression of feelings. It presents a vision of spiritualized nature. In its metric, heptasyllabic and hendecasyllabic verses predominate.
Bécquer’s Narrative Prose: Legends
Legends are fantastic stories, seeking a host in the Middle Ages, in which the characters representing passions become involved in romantic and surreal magical situations. The characteristics of the legends are:
- Medieval setting and characters.
- Presence of magic and the supernatural.
- The dominant theme of impossible love.
- Presence of nature or personified magic.
Rosalía de Castro
Born in Santiago de Compostela, she was the daughter of Teresa Castro, who had no money. No one knew who her father was. She married Manuel Murguía in 1858. All her poetry was a feeling of pain for the deaths of two of her children. She died at the age of 48.
Rosalía’s Work
Her work includes three books: *Cantares Gallegos*, *Follas Novas*, and *En las Orillas del Sar* in Castilian. In *Cantares Gallegos*, she moves away from issues and cultivates intimate poetry.
Rosalía’s Style
Anti-rhetorical, plain language, and in some, excellent symbols. The metric dominates the assonance and rhyme variety of combinations of stanzas and meters.