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Originally Posted by chapinrico
Castillian is the proper name for the spanish language. Spanish is technically wrong. But everyone has gotten used to saying do you speak spanish? Latin american and Spaniards speak Castillian.  |
Sorry, but I don't think this is quite correct. Castillian was the language spoken in that region of Spain during the time when the country was not yet unified. There were several languages struggling to become the dominant language for all the small kingdoms that are now Spain (leonés, aragonés, catalán, even vascuence). The kingdom that succeded in conquering the rest of the kingdoms and imposed its own language to the rest was, you bet, Castille, and so it imposed Castillian as the language to the defeated peoples. Nevertheless, once it became a national language, it turned to be more proper to refer to it as Spanish, as it is the language spoken in all Spain, not only in Castille, so Spaniards and Latin Americans speak Spanish.
You can find an excellent writing on the subject in José G. Moreno de Alba,
Minucias del lenguaje, pages 201-202 (edited by Fondo de Cultura Económica).