A History of the Spanish Language Through Texts

This work examines the evolution of the Spanish language from the Middle Ages to the present day. Including chapters on Latin American Spanish, US Spanish, Judeo-Spanish and Creoles, the book looks at the spread of Castilian as well as at linguistically interesting non-standard developments. Pountain explores a wide range of texts from poetry, through newspaper articles and political documents, to a Bunuel film script and a love letter. The book aims to present a formal history of the language and its texts in a fresh and original way. It includes user-friendly features such as a series of keypoints and a careful indexing and cross-referencing system, and can be used as a freestanding history of the language independent of the illustrative texts themselves.