111 Fun Facts About Spanish Language

Which English animal name comes from a Spanish phrase meaning 'the lizard'?

Alligator is a corruption of el lagarto: English speakers fused the Spanish article el onto the noun, turning 'the lizard' into a single word.

The Spanish word 'embarazada' famously means what, not 'embarrassed'?

Pregnant is what embarazada means, though English 'embarrass' may descend, via French, from the very same Spanish verb, embarazar.

Which country has the most native Spanish speakers?

Mexico has about 130 million native speakers, yet a 2003 law made Spanish just one of its national languages, with the same validity as its Indigenous languages.

Which American cowboy word is an anglicized form of the Spanish 'vaquero'?

Buckaroo comes from vaquero, itself from vaca, 'cow', and English speakers probably bent its spelling toward the familiar word 'buck'.

Which US state's name comes from the Spanish word for 'snowy'?

Nevada means 'snowy' in Spanish, a nod to its snow-capped mountains, yet it is the driest state in the nation.

Which is the only Spanish-speaking country located entirely in Africa?

Equatorial Guinea speaks Spanish from its colonial past, yet French, one of its other official languages, is little known locally.

What letter does the Spanish alphabet have that English lacks?

Ñ has its own key on Spanish keyboards, and Spain has fought efforts to let computers be sold there without it.

In Spanish, which letter is pronounced exactly like b?

V and b once stood for different sounds, but the two merged, and in modern Spanish both are pronounced as b.

What punctuation does Spanish put at the START of an interrogative sentence?

The Royal Spanish Academy first recommended ¿ and ¡ in its 1754 orthography.

Which Spanish word comes from the Latin for 'the sixth hour', counted from dawn?

Siesta goes back to sexta hora, the noon hour, when people in hot countries have long rested through the heat.

What is the motto of the Royal Spanish Academy?

Its emblem is a crucible on a fire, purifying the language like metal.

Which Spanish word comes from the Arabic for 'the judge'?

Alcalde comes from al-qadi, and fittingly alcaldes long acted as town judges as well as mayors.

The Spanish interjection 'ojalá' ('let's hope') comes from an Arabic phrase meaning what?

Everyday words like almohada (pillow), aceite (oil) and azúcar (sugar) are Arabic loans too.

The Spanish words tomate, chocolate and aguacate come from which indigenous language?

Nahuatl, the Aztecs' language, named foods the Spanish had never seen, and English then took tomato, chocolate and avocado from Spanish.

'Hurricane', 'hammock' and 'canoe' reached Spanish and English from which Caribbean language?

Taíno words reached Europe with Columbus, who himself used its word canoa, which gave English canoe.

Which Andean language gave Spanish the words cóndor, puma, llama and pampa?

Quechua was the main language of the Incas, and condor, puma and llama traveled on from Spanish into English.

Which scholar wrote the first grammar of the Spanish language, published in 1492?

Antonio de Nebrija later fell under Grand Inquisitor Diego de Deza's suspicion for studying the Bible from its original texts.

Spanish is often nicknamed 'the language of' which writer?

Cervantes was seized by corsairs while sailing home to Spain and spent five years as a captive in Algiers before being ransomed.

Which English word began as Spanish for 'little war', during Spain's fight against Napoleon's armies?

Guerrilla, the diminutive of guerra, named bands of Spanish peasants harrying the occupying French, and English soon used it for any irregular fighter.

The oldest surviving epic poem in Spanish tells the deeds of which hero?

El Cid was the real knight Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, and the poem begins with his king sending him into exile.

In which city was the written standard of Spanish first developed in the 13th century?

Toledo's translators under Alfonso X stopped using Latin as their target language and put Arabic and Latin works into Spanish instead.

In most of Spain, how is the letter z (and c before e or i) pronounced?

Like the 'th' in 'thing' is heard in northern and central Spain, while Latin Americans use an s sound, so casa (house) and caza (hunt) sound alike there.

In which country is voseo, saying vos instead of tú, the everyday standard?

Argentina uses vos in everyday speech, a pronoun that lost currency in Spain but survived across much of Latin America.

Which pronoun do Spaniards use for the informal plural 'you', that Latin Americans replace with ustedes?

In all of Hispanic America and the Canary Islands, ustedes serves as both formal and informal plural.

Which Spanish body part ending in -o is feminine?

Mano keeps the feminine gender of Latin manus, so Spanish says la mano despite the -o ending.

Which of these dialect features, the merger of ll and y, is called yeísmo?

Most dialects have merged them; the old 'lli as in million' sound survives mainly in rural northern Spain and the Andes.

Spanish explorers named Florida partly for 'Pascua Florida', their name for which festival season?

Easter was the season when Ponce de León landed, and 'florida', from Latin floridus, 'in bloom', also fit the lush coast.

Spanish is co-official with English in which US territory?

Puerto Rico's second official language, English, has seen its status swing back and forth with whichever party holds power.

Which Portuguese-speaking country passed a law obliging its secondary schools to offer Spanish classes?

Brazil's 2005 law obliged secondary schools to offer Spanish, but the requirement was scrapped little more than a decade later.

In which Asian country was Spanish an official language for more than three centuries?

The Philippines removed Spanish as an official language in 1973, but a presidential decree that same year kept it official while old government records stayed untranslated.

In traditional Spanish naming, a person's second surname comes from whom?

Their mother's first surname traditionally comes second, though since 1999 Spanish parents can agree to put it first.

Which language, spoken by descendants of Jews expelled from Spain, grew out of medieval Spanish?

Ladino is endangered, and Spain's Royal Spanish Academy has backed a new Ladino academy in Israel to help preserve it.

Which Central American country has English as its only official language, though many people also speak Spanish?

Belize, known as British Honduras until 1973, was a British colony, which is why English, not Spanish, is its official language.

Which Spanish word can mean both 'tomorrow' and 'morning'?

Mañana on its own means tomorrow, so Spanish speakers say 'mañana por la mañana' for tomorrow morning.

Which Spanish word do people say both after a sneeze and when raising a glass?

Salud means health, so it wishes you well whether you have just sneezed or are raising a glass.

Which pair left the Spanish alphabet in 2010?

Ch and ll had counted as letters of their own, so until 1994 dictionaries filed chico after every word starting with cu-.

Which northern Spanish language is thought to be why Latin's initial f became a silent h in Spanish (harina)?

The doublets Fernando/Hernando and fierro/hierro are relics of that shift.

Unlike English, Spanish writes which of these with a lowercase first letter?

Months are lowercase in Spanish, and septiembre, the ninth, is named for seven because the old Roman calendar started its year in March.

Which insect name did English reshape from Spanish into two English-looking words?

Cockroach grew from Spanish cucaracha, and because it looked like a compound, English later clipped it to plain roach.

A Spanish word for 'butter' is mantequilla in Spain, but what is it called in Argentina and Uruguay?

In Spain manteca means lard; avocado is palta and apricot damasco in the same countries.

Which English word for a steep gorge comes from Spanish?

Canyon most likely comes from cañón, tube, so a gorge was named for a pipe's shape, though the early spelling callon hints at calle, street.

Spanish has two verbs for 'to be'; which one gives a location, as in 'Madrid ___ en España'?

Estar covers location and passing states, yet Spanish also uses it for death, as in 'está muerto', he is dead.

Which Spanish word means wave, as in the sea?

Ola means wave, and because h is silent in Spanish, ola and hola are pronounced exactly alike.

Which feminine Spanish noun takes el?

Agua takes el only because it starts with a stressed a, and it stays feminine, so Spanish says el agua fresca.

Which animal is a 'gato'?

It comes from the Late Latin cattus, so a Spanish gato, an Italian gatto and a French chat are all the same word.

What is a 'perro'?

A dog is a perro, a word of uncertain origin, perhaps a call for dogs, while the Latin-derived can survives only as a formal word.

Which colour is 'rojo'?

In Costa Rica a 'rojo' is also slang for the red 1,000-colón banknote.

Which colour is 'verde'?

Green is verde, and Cabo Verde, 'Green Cape', is named after a headland in Senegal rather than its own mostly dry islands.

What number is 'diez'?

Ten is diez, and speakers slip it in place of Dios, God, to soften oaths, turning ¡rediós! into a milder ¡rediez!

Which day of the week is 'lunes'?

Monday is lunes, from Latin Lunae dies, 'day of the Moon', and the English name is itself a translation of that same Latin day name.

What would you be buying if you asked for 'leche'?

Milk is leche, and slowly cooking milk with sugar for hours thickens it into dulce de leche, the caramel-coloured spread.

Where are children going when heading off to the 'escuela'?

School and escuela both go back to Greek skholē, 'leisure', which came to mean learned talk in free time and then the place for it.

Which day of the week is the unlucky "martes 13"?

Tuesday the 13th is the unlucky date in Spanish-speaking countries, and an old proverb warns against marrying or setting sail on it.

What is a "tortilla" in Spain?

An omelette is a tortilla in Spain, and legend ties the classic one to a Carlist general in 1835, yet an 1817 Navarre record already tells of stretching a few eggs into a big, thick one.

Which language shares official status with Spanish at the United Nations?

Russian is one of the UN's six official languages, like Spanish, so a speech in either is interpreted live into the other five.

Which one-letter Spanish word means 'and'?

Y means and, but it changes to e before a word starting with an i sound, as in 'francés e inglés'.

Which Spanish word lost its written accent under the 2010 spelling rules?

Sólo lost its accent because 'only' and 'alone' are both stressed, so it never split a stressed word from an unstressed twin, the job a diacritic accent does.

The first Spanish grammar, published in 1492, declared that language was always the companion of what?

Empire was the point: the book was presented to Queen Isabella, arguing that conquered peoples would need to learn their conquerors' language.

Papiamento, the local language of which Dutch Caribbean island, is shaped by Venezuelan Spanish?

Most people on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao speak Spanish with varying, often high, fluency.

Which Caribbean nation launched a 'Spanish as a First Foreign Language' initiative in March 2005?

The policy reflects its proximity to Venezuela and a small existing native Spanish-speaking minority.

Which two cities on Africa's north coast are part of Spain?

Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish, yet Ceuta's black-and-white flag copies Lisbon's, because Portugal conquered the city first.

Las Vegas, the desert city famous for its casino-lined Strip, has a Spanish name meaning what?

The Meadows described the grassy lowlands that desert springs once fed in the valley, a welcome stop for trade caravans long before any casino opened.

The burrito, a filled wrap sold at taquerias worldwide, has a Spanish name literally meaning what?

Little donkey is the literal meaning, since burrito is the diminutive of burro, a word English also borrowed for the small pack animal.

Spanish 'esposas' means 'wives', but it is also the everyday word for which police equipment?

Handcuffs take the same plural as wives in Spanish, so only context tells them apart. A single cuff is an 'esposa', exactly like a single wife.

In the name of Real Madrid, the football club that plays at the Bernabéu stadium, what does 'Real' mean?

Royal is the meaning, an honour bestowed by King Alfonso XIII in 1920. Until then the team, founded in 1902, was plain Madrid Football Club.

Steven Spielberg's 1975 thriller Jaws was released in Spanish as 'Tiburón', a word that means what?

Shark is the plain Spanish title, with no play on the animal's bite. Peter Benchley's novel, the source of the film, is sold under the same name.

A matador, the star performer of a Spanish bullfight, has a title that literally means what?

Killer is the literal sense: the formal title is 'matador de toros', killer of bulls. Inside the ring the same performer is addressed as 'maestro'.

In Spain, friends casually call each other 'tío', a word that literally names which male relative?

Uncle is the dictionary meaning, yet in Spain 'tío' doubles as 'guy' or 'dude' between friends who share no family tie at all.

The piña colada, a blend of rum, coconut cream and fruit juice, has a Spanish name meaning what?

Strained pineapple is the literal translation, a nod to the freshly pressed and strained juice that goes into the glass with the rum and coconut.

In Breaking Bad, Gus Fring's fast-food chain Los Pollos Hermanos has a Spanish name meaning what?

The Chicken Brothers is the translation, and the fried-chicken chain reappears in the spin-off series Better Call Saul.

The Pacific warming pattern El Niño, 'the boy', was named by Peruvian sailors after which figure?

The Christ Child gave the warm current its name because it tended to appear off Peru around late December. Its cooler opposite phase became La Niña, 'the girl'.

Which Spanish word for 'friends' completes the title of the 1986 Steve Martin comedy '¡Three ___!'?

Amigos fits: the film follows three out-of-work silent-film actors mistaken for real gunfighters by a village in danger. Disney's 1944 trio were The Three Caballeros.

In Disney's Encanto, Mirabel calls the family matriarch Alma 'Abuela', the Spanish word for which relative?

Grandmother is the meaning, and Alma is simply called Abuela throughout the film. The masculine form, 'abuelo', means grandfather.

The band Los Lobos, who topped the US charts in 1987 with 'La Bamba', have a Spanish name meaning what?

The Wolves began as Los Lobos del Este, 'the Wolves of the East', a playful nod to the norteño stars Los Tigres del Norte.

Luis Fonsi's 2017 global hit 'Despacito', featuring Daddy Yankee, has a Spanish title meaning what?

Slowly is the meaning, and the track acts it out: the music brakes each time the word arrives at the start of the chorus.

Ricky Martin's 1999 chart-topper 'Livin' la Vida Loca' has a half-Spanish title that means 'living' what?

The crazy life is the translation: 'loca' is the feminine of 'loco', a word English borrowed for anything wild. The song led Martin's first English-language album.

The masked swordsman Zorro, created in 1919 by pulp writer Johnston McCulley, has a Spanish name meaning what?

Fox is the meaning: in the stories the townspeople call the hero El Zorro for his cunning. His calling card is a slashed Z, never a picture of the animal.

Gabriel García Márquez's 1967 novel 'Cien años de soledad' reached English readers under which title?

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a word-for-word translation: 'cien' is a hundred, 'años' are years and 'soledad' is solitude. The saga follows the Buendía family of Macondo.

The beer brand Corona, sold in Spain for decades as Coronita, takes its name from the Spanish word for what?

Crown is the meaning. A winemaker in Spain already owned the 'Coronas' trademark, so the beer had to go on sale there under the diminutive Coronita.

The quesadilla, a folded and griddled tortilla snack, is named for 'queso', the Spanish word for which filling?

Cheese gives the dish its name, which is a diminutive of 'quesada'. Cooks melt it inside the folded tortilla on a hot griddle called a comal.

The margarita, a tequila and lime cocktail, shares its name with the Spanish word for which flower?

Daisy is the translation, and a drink called the Tequila Daisy was in American newspapers by 1936, one clue to how the margarita got its name.

The Spanish word 'once', a descendant of the Latin 'undecim', names which number?

Eleven is the meaning, which is why Spanish football writers call a team's starting line-up 'el once'. The word only looks like the English adverb.

The Spanish false friend 'éxito', seen on hits albums titled 'Grandes Éxitos', means what rather than 'exit'?

Success is the meaning, which is why a 'Grandes Éxitos' album is a greatest-hits collection. The way out of a Spanish building is signposted 'salida'.

The Spanish false friend 'librería' is not a library, which is a 'biblioteca', but which kind of place?

A bookshop is what a librería is: the books there are for sale, not for loan. French sets the same trap with 'librairie'.

The Spanish false friend 'ropa', as in the shredded-beef dish 'ropa vieja', means what rather than 'rope'?

Clothes is the meaning, so the stew ropa vieja is literally 'old clothes'. An actual rope is a 'cuerda' in Spanish.

The Spanish word 'pie', a relative of the English 'pedal' and 'pedestrian', names which part of the body?

Foot is the meaning, inherited from the Latin 'pedem', so going somewhere 'a pie' simply means walking there.

The polite Spanish pronoun 'usted' is a worn-down form of 'vuestra merced', an old courtesy title meaning what?

Your grace, literally 'your mercy', was a title for social superiors that speech wore down to usted. That origin is why the pronoun still takes third-person verbs.

Spanish surnames such as Fernández and Rodríguez end in '-ez', a suffix that originally carried what meaning?

Son of is the sense: after the Visigothic invasion, Iberians attached the ending to a father's forename, so Fernández began as Fernando's boy. Portuguese spells it Fernandes.

In Spanish, 'padre' is a father, but the plural 'padres' is also the everyday word for which people?

Parents is the meaning, because Spanish uses the masculine plural for a mixed pair. The 'Reyes Católicos', literally Catholic Kings, were Ferdinand and Isabella.

At a quinceañera, a traditional Latin American coming-of-age party, which birthday is a girl celebrating?

Fifteenth, and the name says so: 'quince' is the Spanish for fifteen. The day may open with a religious ceremony before the food, music and dancing.

By number of native speakers, Spanish ranks second in the world behind which other language?

Mandarin is the only language with more native speakers. Count second-language speakers too and Spanish drops to fourth, behind English, Mandarin and Hindi.

Tierra del Fuego, the archipelago at South America's southern tip, has a Spanish name meaning what?

Land of Fire recalls 1520, when Ferdinand Magellan sailed past and saw the many fires that the islanders kept burning along the shore.

The flat-topped desert hill called a mesa takes its name from the Spanish word for which piece of furniture?

Table is the meaning: geologist Kirk Bryan wrote in 1922 that mesas stand above the surrounding country as a table stands above the floor.

The Texas city of Amarillo, a stop on historic Route 66, takes its name from the Spanish word for which colour?

Yellow is the meaning, probably inspired by the wildflowers of spring and summer or by the yellow soil along the banks of nearby Amarillo Creek.

The fiery habanero chilli pepper is named in Spanish after which Caribbean capital city?

Havana lent its name because the pepper was once heavily traded there, yet fiery chillies are rarely used in traditional Cuban cooking.

The Spanish word 'caballero', meaning a gentleman or knight, is built on 'caballo', the word for which animal?

Horse is the root: 'caballo' plus the ending '-ero' first meant a horseman, then a knight, and only later any well-mannered man.

The wide-brimmed sombrero takes its name from 'sombra', the Spanish word for what?

Shade is the root, making a sombrero literally a 'shade-maker'. To English speakers it means one broad-brimmed style, but in Spanish the word covers any hat.

The English word 'vigilante' was borrowed from Spanish, where it is an everyday job title meaning what?

A watchman, or security guard, is all a vigilante is in Spanish, with no hint of taking the law into one's own hands. The word traces to the Latin 'vigilans', watchful.

The Old West slang 'hoosegow', meaning a jail, is a mangling of the Spanish 'juzgado', which names what place?

A courthouse is the standard meaning. English speakers heard the casual pronunciation 'juzgao', in which the d all but vanishes, and respelled it by ear.

The fresh chopped salsa pico de gallo has a Spanish name that literally means what?

Rooster's beak is the literal meaning. One explanation from Sonora is that the serrano peppers chopped into the mix are shaped like one.

The precious metal platinum takes its name from 'platina', a Spanish diminutive of the word for which other metal?

Silver was the yardstick: Spaniards in South America at first treated the whitish metal as an unwanted impurity in gold, hence the diminutive name.

Spain's 1978 constitution names the official language of the state not as 'español' but with which word?

Castellano, or Castilian, recalls the medieval kingdom where the language first took shape. Colombia's constitution of 1991 chose the same term.

Which day of the week is 'viernes' in Spanish, a name inherited from the Latin for 'day of Venus'?

Friday is viernes, the day of Venus. English renamed the day for a Germanic goddess, but Spanish kept the Roman original.

In Spanish, 'el papa' is the Pope, but across Latin America 'la papa' is which everyday food?

A potato is 'la papa' across Latin America, while most of Spain says 'patata'. Only the article separates the vegetable from the pontiff.

Spanish speakers ask '¿Qué tiempo hace?' using the noun 'tiempo', which means 'time' and also which other thing?

Weather shares the word with time, so 'Hace buen tiempo' means it is a fine day. French does exactly the same with 'temps'.

In Spanish, 'un billón' is a false friend of the English 'billion'; which English number does it actually equal?

A trillion is the English equivalent, because Spanish counts a billón as a million millions. The English billion is 'mil millones', a thousand millions.

Which pair of letters in the Spanish alphabet is found only in words borrowed from other languages?

K and W turn up only in imports such as karate, kilo and waterpolo. Whisky can even be respelled the Spanish way, as 'güisqui'.

Spanish writers can open a line of dialogue with a 'raya' instead of quotation marks; what is a raya?

A dash is the raya, placed at the start of a speaker's line. The same mark, used in pairs, can fence off an aside in the middle of a sentence.

Which Spanish grammar term names words stressed on the third-to-last syllable, such as 'música' and 'teléfono'?

Esdrújula is the term, and it describes itself: es-DRÚ-ju-la is stressed three syllables from the end. Every such word carries a written accent mark.

Spanish 'madrugada', which gives the verb 'madrugar', to get up very early, names which part of the day?

Midnight to sunrise is the madrugada, so 'las tres de la madrugada' is three in the small hours. A habitual early riser is a 'madrugador'.

Sangria, the chilled wine punch of Spain, takes its name from 'sangre', the Spanish word for what?

Blood is the root: sangría is literally 'bloodletting'. A version made with white wine, 'sangria blanca', is a more recent innovation.