Spanish language
Romance language / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Spanish (español) or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 600 million when including second language speakers.[4][5] Spanish is the official language of 20 countries, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations.[6] Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese;[5][7] the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico.[8]
| Spanish | |
|---|---|
| Castilian | |
| |
| Pronunciation | [espaˈɲol] ⓘ [kasteˈʝano] ⓘ, [kasteˈʎano] ⓘ |
| Speakers | Native: 500 million (2023)[1] Total: 600 million[1] 100 million speakers with limited capacity (23 million students)[1] |
Early forms | |
| Latin script (Spanish alphabet) Spanish Braille | |
| Signed Spanish (using signs of the local language) | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | |
| Regulated by | Association of Spanish Language Academies (Real Academia Española and 22 other national Spanish language academies) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | es |
| ISO 639-2 | spa |
| ISO 639-3 | spa |
| Glottolog | stan1288 |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-b |
 Official majority language
Co-official or administrative language but not majority native language
Secondary language (more than 20% Spanish speakers) or culturally important | |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. | |
Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group, in which the language is also known as Castilian (castellano). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century,[9] and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred on the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas.[10]
As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek.[11][12] Alongside English and French, it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world.[13] Spanish is well represented in the humanities and social sciences.[14] Spanish is also the third most used language on the internet by number of users after English and Chinese[15] and the second most used language by number of websites after English.[16]
Spanish is spoken across all continents[17] and is used as an official language by many international organizations, including the United Nations, European Union, Organization of American States, Union of South American Nations, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, African Union, among others.[6]