Spanish

Spanish belongs to the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family. Like all Romance languages, Spanish developed from Vulgar Latin in an area of the Iberian peninsula that is now Spain, and was brought to the Americas, the Philippines, and parts of Oceania by the Spanish colonisation in the 16th century.

It is spoken as a first language by about 352 million people, or by 417 million including second-language speakers, the majority of whom live in Latin America and Spain (Ethnologue). With close to 106 million first-language speakers, Mexico has the largest population of Spanish-speakers in the world. The four next largest populations reside in Colombia (44 million), Spain (43 million), Argentina (39 million) and U.S. (28 million).

Spaniards call their language español when contrasting it with other national languages. They refer to it as castellano (Castilian) when contrasting it with other regional languages of Spain, e.g., Catalan, Galician or Basque. Other Spanish-speaking countries tend to favour one or the other of the two terms.

Spanish is the official language of 22 countries: Argentina, Bolivia (with Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea (with French), Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (with Guarani), Peru (with Quechua and Aymara), Puerto Rico (with English), Spain (co-official in some regions with Catalan, Galician and Basque), Uruguay, Venezuela, and Western Sahara (with Arabic).

Spanish is one of six official working languages of the United Nations and the European Union.

In the United States, Spanish is the most studied foreign language in schools and universities. Spanish has co-official status in the state of New Mexico, and in Puerto Rico.

Dialects
Since Spanish is spoken by so many people in so many countries it is not surprising that it has developed different dialects. The classic division is usually made between Spanish from Spain - Castilian Spanish - and Spanish from Latin America. Within each division there are variations involving pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and intonation.

Despite many regional differences, speakers of Spanish from different countries can understand each other without much difficulty.

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