Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The language known today as Spanish is derived from spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Today it is the world's 4th most widely spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. [1]
Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2023, it is estimated that about 486 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers. [30]
The majority of languages of Spain [4] belong to the Romance language family, of which Spanish is the only one with official status in the whole country. [5] [6] Others, including Catalan (in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands) and Galician (in Galicia), enjoy official status in their respective autonomous regions, similar to Basque in the northeast of the country (a non-Romance ...
Ñ-shaped animation showing flags of some countries and territories where Spanish is spoken. Spanish is the official language (either by law or de facto) in 20 sovereign states (including Equatorial Guinea, where it is official but not a native language), one dependent territory, and one partially recognized state, totaling around 442 million people.
However, the term Spanish (español) is a more recent term that first referred to Spain as a country, and then to the predominant language spoken in that country. Spain as a truly unified nation appeared centuries later than the language and the Kingdom of Castile; in fact, it was only in the late 15th century that the personal union between ...
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
Spanish (sometimes called Castilian) is the only official language of the entire country and is spoken habitually and as a native language among a vast majority of the Spanish population. Spain is, along with Colombia [4] and after Mexico and the United States, [5] ranked third in the world as the country with the most Spanish speakers.
Although the first known text by native speakers dates to 1885, the first record of the language is a list of words recorded in 1793 by Alexander MacKenzie. 1885: Motu: grammar by W.G. Lawes: 1886: Guugu Yimidhirr: notes by Johann Flierl, Wilhelm Poland and Georg Schwarz, culminating in Walter Roth's The Structure of the Koko Yimidir Language ...