Language Fact File – Spanish

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

Number of native speakers: approximately 500m.

Learn some: Spanish is a global super language, so many of us already know the basics – greetings, pleasantries etc. If you are too convincing with those and you need to explain to someone that you don’t really speak Spanish, it’s “lo siento, no hablo español”!

Fast facts:

• Although the language is named after its country of origin, Spain, it is actually the largest of several regional languages spoken there. What we call Spanish is castellano, or Castilian. In Spain, there are also: Basque, Catalan, Valencian and Galician. Across the world, there are also significant variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, especially among Latin American countries.
• After Mandarin Chinese, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world, and growing! Unlike Mandarin, Spanish is written phonetically, which means that once you know the rules of pronunciation, you can read anything, even if you don’t know what it means.
• While it is no longer spoken as an official language in the Philippines, Spanish heavily influenced Tagalog, of which 33% of words are Spanish. Four languages are also based on Spanish: Papiamento, Chavacano, Palanquero and Yopará.