The 5 Languages of Spain & What They Sound Like

🇪🇸 Spanish is the official language of Spain, right? ... Yes, but there are five official languages in total, with plenty more regional dialects throughout Spain.

In this video, I'll show you all the languages of Spain, including the ones you never knew existed, and you'll hear what these languages sound like when spoken by native speakers.

We'll explore the following:

00:00 An introduction to languages in Spain
00:58 The official languages of Spain
1:06 Castilian Spanish
3:20 What does Castilian Spanish sound like?
3:52 The Catalan Language
6:00 What does Catalan sound like?
6:15 The Aranese Dialect
6:55 What does the Aranese dialect sound like?
7:08 The Basque Language
8:35 What does the Basque language sound like?
8:55 The Galician Language
10:00 What does the Galician language sound like?
10:45 The other languages of Spain

[LVWelch]

Catalan is spoken not only where it is mentioned in this video, but it is also the official language of Andorra.

[qwertyTRiG]

The fact that Spain has multiple sign languages is also worth mentioning.

[MartimCorreia]

As a Portuguese I love Spain, specially Galicia, since they're literally brothers to us, we originate from them. Saludos cálidos españoles

[marinaaaa]

The fact that occitan only survives in spain goes to show how brutal france was with its languages

[lorenzoromanista]

I'm so happy you used as example of the catalan listening a Mallorcan speaker of catalan. I'm from Mallorca and I'm glad not always hearing the Barcelona variety of the language. I don't know if it was on purpose or random, but it was super nice, thank you <3 🤩

[lisboastory]

Hello, spanish guy here. Just two things:
1) The flag you presented is not the catalan flag, but the flag of a political party (you may notice that the flag you present here is similar to the flag of Cuba, Catalonian flag is much older than that)
2) Spain has also a whistle language (La Gomera island). Have a look

[cesarbravo]

The surprising thing is not the number of languages that are spokenn in Spain but the fact that 5 of them are oficially recognized. In France, besides French they have Breton, Basque, Catalan, Occitan, Corsician, Galloise, several german dialects, In the UK Irish, Manx, Scotish Gaelic, Scots, Normand in the Isles of The Channel, Welsh... But they only recognize a dingle "national" language. Diversity is everywhere. You have to be brave enough to accept it.

[aaronodonoghue]

Technically, not _all_ "al-" words come from Arabic, one exception coming to mind is "alto/alta", meaning "high/tall" and coming from Latin

[sassisch]

Catalan is the national language of Andorra.
It‘s worth mentioning that Aranese is a dialect of Occitan, the indigenous language of Southern France.

[WanderingPassports]

2:10 Whoa there, Anglo, the Berber "Moors" were not black sub-saharans except for a tiny minority that were enslaved by the Arab caliphates, and they did not "rule Spain for over 700 years", that is completely false for two reasons: First, Spain did not exist until the 1400's, and second, the "Moors" only ruled the southern region of Granada for 700 years (they were allowed to stay as long as they paid taxes to the christian kingdoms), the rest of the peninsula was reconquered by the christians hundreds of years prior to 1492. Get it right. In addition, not every word that begins with "al" is of Arabic origin, that is also false. Finally, those 4, 000 Arabic loan words that make up less than 3% of modern Spanish are just that, they're loan words (cotton, algebra, alcohol in English all come from Arabic as well shocker). The vast majority are archaisms that have fallen out of use over the last 500 plus years.

[lucassampaioesteves]

4:03 that is Porto in PORTUGAL! Not Catalonia.

[FranciscoCamino]

Little confusion. The official flag of Catalonia doesn’t have a star on it.

[dustin]

This was so well put-together and edited! It was lovely hearing about all these languages, as languages of Spain are an interest of mine.

I spent the past year living in Galicia, and I had the pleasure of talking to many different people about Galego. There are so many different opinions! On top of being suppressed by Franco's dictatorship, Galicia was (until recently) a very poor region and thus the language was looked down upon as Spanish was the more "higher-class" language. This surprised me as an outsider because I find the language so beautiful! However, now there seems to be many efforts among the younger generation to speak Galego with pride. You'll also find many elderly people speaking, as they grew up only speaking it. There seems to be a large generational gap, as the parent generation may not teach their children the language or only speaks Spanish at home. The children understand and learn the language in school, but mainly speak Spanish.

That being said, all documents are written in both Galego and Spanish, and many speeches are given in Galego. There is such a strong culture in regards to music, festivals, dress, and food regardless of what the people are speaking! Galicia has strong Celtic roots, so there are many bagpipe festivals where people dance and sing in Galego. They have a style of playing the tambourine (pandeireta) that is so fascinating and amazing to watch.

In regards to the language, it was the same language as Portuguese until 5-10 centuries ago until the region was incorporated into Spain. Over time, the Spanish language has influenced it strongly and it lost many of the Portuguese sounds (for instance nasalized vowels) to sound more Spanishized, but maintaining a shared vocabulary with Portuguese. However, it still has a few sounds that Spanish doesn't have, for instance the letter "x", which is like the English "sh", as well as the dipthongs "ei" and "ou". Often you'll see cognates between Spanish and Galego that have the following sound changes respectively: J-X, E-EI, O-OU, and H-F.

This ended up being a longer writeup than I expected, but I really loved learning about Galego when I was there!

Eu no falo galego agora, pero quero no futuro!

[HeavenlyWarrior]

Why at 4:04 you show a picture of the city of Porto in Portugal?

[juanrcmi]

The images of San Sebastián (7:51) do not belong to the Basque Country, I assume they are from San Sebastián de la Gomera, a city located in the Canary Islands.

[Eurobrasil]

I am a Portuguese Speaking Brasilian, I met a couple of Spanish, Galician speaking Tourists once.
When they spoke Portuguese, their Galician language actually made them sound more like a Brasilan speaking Portuguese, than an actual native Portuguese speaker of Portugal!

[FluxTrax]

There was an image from outside the São Bento station in Porto used to visualize the use of Catalan...

[InspiradoCidadao]

As native Galician speaker I consider my language and Portuguese as the same language. In the same way there is a Brazilian and an European Portuguese variant. So, in my opinion, Galician should be using our traditional spelling similar to the one used by the Portuguese and Brazilian today, instead of the Castilian Spanish spelling currently used by the Galician government which is foreign to our language.

When visiting Portugal I speak in Galician and I can see how Galician and northern Portuguese dialects share the same words and a very similar pronunciation.

This closeness is because Galiza and Portugal share a common history. In fact, Portugal was part of the Kingdom of Galiza during the Early Middle Ages. Then, in the 12th century, Portugal became an independent Kingdom but the two countries have maintained a strong cultural and economic connection ever since.

In recent years, Galiza and Portugal have continued to strengthen their relationship through various initiatives, such as the EU Galiza-North of Portugal Interregional Cooperation Programme, which promotes collaboration and exchange in areas such as tourism, culture, and entrepreneurship for the benefit of both countries.

[jtpify]

Great video, keep it up! Just some minor corrections: Catalan is also spoken officially in the Valencian Country; Asturian, Leonese and Cantabrian are considered the same language; and the Fala is considered a dialect of Galician

[M_dMV]

Mirandese speaker here! Want to remind you that mirandese is not spoken in Spain! It’s spoken in northeastern portugal!