Spanish language facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Spanish |
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| español castellano |
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| Region | Spain and Latin America (see below) | |||
| Native speakers | 427 million (2016) +80 million as a second language 500 million total |
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| Language family | ||||
| Early forms: |
Old Spanish
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| Writing system | Latin (Spanish alphabet) Spanish Braille |
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| Official status | ||||
| Official language in |
22 countries
Legally:
 ItalyInternational organisations:
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| Regulated by | Association of Spanish Language Academies (Real Academia Española and 21 other national Spanish language academies) |
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| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-b | |||
Countries where Spanish has official status.
Countries and U.S. states where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. Countries and U.S. states where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10–20% of the population. Countries and U.S. states where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5–9.9% of the population. |
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Spanish (Spanish: español, pronounced "Eh-span-yole", IPA: /espaɲol/), also called Castilian, is a Romance language. It is the most spoken Romance language in the world. As of November 2015, over 360 million people in the world spoke Spanish as their first language.
Usage
Spanish is used by many people in the world today, partly because Spain traveled and colonized many different parts of the world and created many new countries and new governments. The countries with Spanish as an official language are called the Hispanic countries. Most of them are in the Americas, which make up Latin America. They include the following:
In North America, Central America, and the Caribbean Islands:
- Costa Rica
- Cuba
- The Dominican Republic
- Guatemala
- Honduras
- Mexico
- Nicaragua
- Panama
- Puerto Rico
- El Salvador
In the United States and Belize, most people use English, but Spanish is the second-most common language.
In South America:
Many Brazilians learn Spanish as a second language even though Brazil's official language is Portuguese.
In other parts of the world:
Related languages
The Spanish language was originally the language of Castile. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, Latin changed in different ways in different provinces. The Latin spoken in the Iberian Peninsula developed into the Ibero-Romance language in the 6th century. Castilian and Portuguese became separate languages around the 12th century.
In Spain, there are other languages that also came from Latin that are connected to Spanish, like Catalan, and Galician. Basque, also called Euskera or Euskara, is spoken in the Basque region of northern Spain and the southern region of France. Very different from Spanish, Basque is a language isolate since it is not known to have descended from any language family.
Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish and is actually more closely related to French.
Name
Spanish is sometimes called Castilian because Castile is the region in Spain that is the origin of the language. Castile is the region that is considered to speak the most proper form of Spanish.
The Spanish word for Spanish is "español", and the Spanish word for Castilian is "castellano". In the other Romance languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, such as Galician, Catalan, Asturian, and others, Spanish is usually called "Castellán" or "Castellà" instead of "Spanish". In Spain, the name of the subject in schools is "lengua castellana" (Castilian language). However, in the regions of Spain in which people speak only Spanish, people call their language Spanish.
In Portuguese, the word "castelhano" is common to mention Spanish, however, in informal language, the most preferred name for the language is "espanhol". Portuguese, which is spoken in Portugal and Brazil, has many similarities to Spanish.
Statistics
In 2009, for the first time in history, Spanish was the most common "mother tongue" language of the western world, more than English. It was also the second most common language on Earth, after Chinese. As of 2016, the three most common languages in the world are:
- Chinese: Spoken by about 1.305 billion people
- Spanish: Spoken by about 427 million people in 34 different countries
- English: Spoken by 339 million people in 108 different countries
Images for kids
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Map indicating places where the language is called castellano (in red) or español (in blue)
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The Visigothic Cartularies of Valpuesta, written in a late form of Latin, were declared in 2010 by the Royal Spanish Academy as the record of the earliest words written in Castilian, predating those of the Glosas Emilianenses.
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Chronological map showing linguistic evolution in southwest Europe
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Antonio de Nebrija, author of Gramática de la lengua castellana, the first grammar of a modern European language.
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Spanish language signage in Malabo, capital city of Equatorial Guinea.
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Early flag of the Filipino revolutionaries ("Long live the Philippine Republic!!!"). The first two constitutions were written in Spanish.
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Announcement in Spanish on Easter Island, welcoming visitors to Rapa Nui National Park
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Miguel de Cervantes, considered by many the greatest author of Spanish literature, and author of Don Quixote, widely considered the first modern European novel.
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A world map attempting to identify the main dialects of Spanish.
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An examination of the dominance and stress of the voseo feature in Hispanic America. Data generated as illustrated by the Association of Spanish Language Academies. The darker the area, the stronger its dominance.
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The Rashi script, originally used to print Judaeo-Spanish.
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An original letter in Haketia, written in 1832.
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Cervantes Institute headquarters, Madrid
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See also
In Spanish: Idioma español para niños
