Llanito

Llanito is the local vernacular language of Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. It is a hybrid form of speech that blends English and Spanish, with elements from other Mediterranean languages and a distinctive urban vocabulary. Llanito is primarily a spoken language, used in daily interaction, street life, and informal media, and it exists alongside English and Spanish within the same community.

Llanito emerged during the 19th and 20th centuries from sustained bilingual contact between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking residents in Gibraltar. It developed as a flexible code-switching system, enabling speakers to switch between languages within sentences or phrases. The vocabulary is largely English in origin, but Spanish words and phrases are inserted or calqued into idioms, and new compound forms are created.

Linguistic features: Typical Llanito uses English grammar as its backbone, while Spanish-derived terms fill the lexicon and discourse. Speakers commonly switch languages for specific words, cultural references, or emphasis. There is no single standardized orthography; written Llanito appears in various ad hoc spellings in print and online.

Usage and status: Llanito is widely used among Gibraltarians in everyday conversation and local media, and is a marker of local identity. It is not an official language; English is the territory’s administrative language, with Spanish widely understood. Llanito has attracted scholarly attention for its sociolinguistic dynamics and as a marker of local identity.