Spanish Language Facts

Spanish Facts

Spanish is the most commonly used language worldwide after Chinese. It is the first language in America, and Spanish has speakers in Spain, of course, but also in the United States, Philippines where was official language until the XX century and even Africa.

Spanish is the official language in Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Cuba, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Panama, Uruguay and Equatorial Guinea.

Other countries or semi-autonomous areas with significant Spanish-speaking populations are Andorra, Gibraltar, Belize, Philippines, the United States, Western Sahara, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Learn more reasons to Learn Spanish.

Spanish is spoken in the five continents, Europe (Spain), America, Africa (Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea), Asia (Philippines) and Oceania (Guam and Northern Mariana Islands).

Spanish has 570 million speakers, 480 million native speakers, and 90 million L2 speakers.

Spanish derives from Latin and is a Romance language like French or Italian.

Castilian Spanish was traditionally considered the purest form of Spanish but nowadays all the regional varieties are very considered.

Spanish has several creole languages, a natural language developed from a mixture of Spanish and different local languages at a fairly sudden point in time. The Chavacano is spoken in the Philippines, the Palenquero is spoken in Colombia, Bozal in Congo (with Portuguese influences), Esmeraldeño in Ecuador, Annobonense in Equatorial Guinea, Papiamento in Curaçao and Bonaire and Pichinglis is spoken in Bioko island.

About 5,8 percent of the world population speak Spanish, before English with the 5,52 percent and Hindi with 4,46 percent and only the Mandarin Chinese win Spanish with the 14,1 percent of the world population.

The 5,1 percent people who use the Internet speak Spanish, making it the No. 5 language in the Internet community, following English (51,2 percent), Russian (6,7 percent), Japanese (5,9 percent) German (5,6 percent). Close behind French with 4,1 percent followed by Chinese, with 2,0 percent.

For all these reasons, Spanish offers the most rewards to learn a foreign language. It’s never too late to begin learning.