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Spanish is an Iberian Romance language, and the third or fourth most spoken language in the world. It is spoken as a first language by about 352 million people, or by 417 million including non-native speakers (according to 1999 estimates). The majority of Spanish speakers live in Latin America.
| Spanish (espaņol or castellano) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Nicaragua, Chile, USA, Venezuela, Costa Rica , Cuba and 35 other countries. |
| Total speakers: | 417 million |
| Genetic classification: |
Indo-European ItalicThe Italic subfamily is a member of the Centum branch of the Indo-European language group. Italic has two branches: Sabellic including: Oscan, spoken in the south-central region of the Italian peninsula Umbrian (not to be confused with the modern Umbrian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Chile, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Cuba and 14 other countries |
| Regulated by: | Real Academia Espaņola |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1: | es |
| ISO 639-2: | spa |
| SIL: | SPN |
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Spaniards tend to call their language espaņol (Spanish) when contrasting it with other national languages (e.g. in a list with French and English), but call it castellano (Castilian) when contrasting it with regional languages of Spain (like Galician, Basque, and Catalan.) For the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, speakers of the language in some areas refer to it as espaņol, and in others castellano is more common.
Spanish is a member of the Romance branch of Indo-European.
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The Spanish language was developed from vulgar Latin, with influence from Basque and Arabic, in the north of the Iberian Peninsula (see Iberian Romance languages). Typical features of Spanish diachronical phonology include lenition (Latin vita, Spanish vida), palatalization (Latin annum, Spanish aņo) and diphthongation of breve E/O from vulgar Latin (Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo); similar phenomena can be found in most Romance languages as well.
During the Reconquista, this northern dialect was carried south.
The language was brought to the Americas, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by the Spanish colonization since 16th century.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara.
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