Spanish language

Spanish
Castilian
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol], [kasteˈʎano]
Native to	Andorra  Argentina  Belize  Bolivia  Chile  Colombia  Costa Rica  Cuba  Dominican Republic  Ecuador  El Salvador  Equatorial Guinea  Federated States of Micronesia  Gibraltar  Guam  Guatemala  Honduras  Mexico  Morocco  Nicaragua  Panama  Paraguay  Peru  Philippines  Puerto Rico  Spain  Trinidad and Tobago  United States  Uruguay  Venezuela  Western Sahara
Region	Spain, Latin America and the United States of America (see below)
Ethnicity	Spaniards
Native speakers	[1] +99 million as a second language[1] 595 million total
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Western Romance Ibero-Romance West-Iberian Castilian Spanish
Early form	Old Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet) Spanish Braille
Official status
Official language in	24 countries Argentina Bolivia Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Federated States of Micronesia[2] Guatemala Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines[3] Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Spain United States[4] Uruguay Venezuela 12 dependent territories Balearic Islands (Spain) Canary Islands (Spain) Ceuta (Spain) Easter Island (Chile) Galapagos Islands (Ecuador) Juan Fernandez Islands (Chile) Melilla (Spain) New Mexico (United States) Puerto Rico Roraima (Brazil) San Andrés y Providencia (Colombia) Tindouf Province (Algeria) Minority language Algeria Andorra Angola Aruba Australia Austria Belgium Belize Bhutan Brazil Bulgaria Cameroon Canada Caribbean Netherlands Cayman Islands China Cyprus Czechia Denmark Egypt Estonia Falkland Islands Fiji Finland France Gabon Germany Gibraltar Guam Guyana Haiti Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Marshall Islands Mauritania Mongolia Morocco Nepal New Caledonia New Zealand Nigeria Northern Mariana Islands Norway Palau Papua New Guinea Poland Portugal Romania Russia South Sudan Sweden Trinidad and Tobago Türkiye United Kingdom United States Virgin Islands International organisations: United Nations African Union Andean Community European Union Mercosur Organization of American States Union of South American Nations
Regulated by	Association of Spanish Language Academies (Real Academia Española and 21 other national Spanish language academies)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa
ISO 639-3	spa
Linguasphere	51-AAA-b
Countries where Spanish is the official language   Countries where Spanish is a co-official language   Countries where Spanish is culturally important or is spoken by more than 20% of the population   Countries where Spanish is spoken by less than 20% of the population
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Spanish (Spanish: español, pronounced "Eh-span-yole", IPA: /espaɲol/), also called Castilian, is a Romance language. It is the most spoken Romance language in the world. As of December 2021, over 489 million people in the world spoke Spanish as their first language.^[1]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Fernández Vítores, David (2021): El español: una lengua viva – Informe 2021 (PDF) (Report). Instituto Cervantes. 2020. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 February 2020. Retrieved 14 December 2020.
2. ↑ Spanish is partly official in there according to the Catholic Church of Micronesia
3. ↑ Spanish is partly official in there due to some cultural reasons
4. ↑ Spanish is occasionally official in there because of the hispanic population. However, about 58 million people speak Spanish there