History of the Spanish language
The Spanish language was developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Basque and Arabic, in the north of Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish año) and diphthongation of breve E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo); similar phenomena can be found in most Romance languages as well.After the Reconquista, this northern dialect was brought to the south.
The language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by the Spanish colonization since 16th century.
The Spanish missionaries preached the natives in selected local languages like Guaraní, Quechua and Aymará in the Americas, or Tagalog in the Philippines, rather than Spanish, to spread the Catholic faith to the various ethnic tribes in the different territories. They produced single-handedly the first body of written literatures of the respective tongues.
In the Americas its usage was continued by the descendants of the Spaniards, whether by the large population of Spanish Creoless or by what had then become the mixed Spanish-Amerindian (Mestizo) majority. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population to strengthen national unity.
In the Philippines, this process did not occur for several reasons. It was isolated as the only Spanish colony in Asia, far removed from all of Spain's colonies in the Americas. Rather than being a direct colony of Spain, the Philippines was in fact a colony of another Spanish colony, New Spain, and was administered from Mexico City, thereby lessening the ties and interest of Spain proper, and disabling the large scale Spanish migration experienced across the Americas. In comparison to its counterparts in Spanish America, the Philippine population was [and still is] almost exclusively native, mixed Spanish-Filipinos (Filipino mestizos) were dismal in numbers, while Spaniards (of which many were actually Mexican Creoless) accounted for even fewer than did their mestizos. Following the Spanish-American War some Spaniards present in the country eventually returned to Mexico or Spain. Ultimately, at the culmination of the Philippine-American War population was decimated as casualties of war and English was declared an official language. Although, the spanish was used frequently by population. In his book “Yesterdays in the Philippines”, 1899, the american John Early Stevens wrote: Spanish, of course, is the court and commercial language and, except among the uneducated native who have a ling of their own or among the few members of the Anglo-Saxon colony, it (Spanish) has a monopoly everywhere. No one can really get on without it, and even the Chinese come in with their peculiar pidgin variety. (Page 11).
In Puerto Rico, which became [and to this day remains] a possession of the United States following the Spanish-American War, the population is almost entirely of Spanish or mixed Spanish (whether mulatto or mestizo) descent, thereby enabling the retention of Spanish as the mother tongue while coexisting with the American imposed English as official languages.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara. In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War.
After World War II and during the Marcos regime, many of the old Spanish-speaking families in Phillipines migrated to Europe or the Americas. There were reportedly 6 million Spanish speakers in the Philippines in 1940, but in 2000 only 1.5 million Filipinos admitted to speaking some level of Spanish. Spanish was an official language of the Philippines and was a required subject in college up until 1987 when a new constitution was adopted.