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Spanish language signage in Malabo, capital city of Equatorial Guinea. Spanish 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 November 2015, over 360 million people in the world spoke Spanish as their first language. Usage Spanish is used by many people in the world today, partly because Spain traveled and colonized many different parts of the world and created many new countries and new governments. The countries with Spanish as an official language are called the Hispanic countries. Most of them are in the Americas, which make up Latin America.

Related languages The Spanish language was originally the language of Castile. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, Latin changed in different ways in different provinces. The Latin spoken in the Iberian Peninsula developed into the Ibero-Romance language in the 6th century. Castilian and Portuguese became separate languages around the 12th century. In Spain, there are other languages that also came from Latin that are connected to Spanish, like Catalan, and Galician. Basque, also called Euskera or Euskara, is spoken in the Basque region of northern Spain and the southern region of France. Very different from Spanish, Basque is a language isolate since it is not known to have descended from any language family. Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish and is actually more closely related to French.

Name Spanish is sometimes called Castilian because Castile is the region in Spain that is the origin of the language. Castile is the region that is considered to speak the most proper form of Spanish. The Spanish word for Spanish is "español", and the Spanish word for Castilian is "castellano". In the other Romance languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, such as Galician, Catalan, Asturian, and others, Spanish is usually called "Castellán" or "Castellà" instead of "Spanish". In Spain, the name of the subject in schools is "lengua castellana" (Castilian language). However, in the regions of Spain in which people speak only Spanish, people call their language Spanish. In Portuguese, the word "castelhano" is common to mention Spanish, however, in informal language, the most preferred name for the language is "espanhol". Portuguese, which is spoken in Portugal and Brazil, has many similarities to Spanish.

Statistics In 2009, for the first time in history, Spanish was the most common "mother tongue" language of the western world, more than English. It was also the second most common language on Earth, after Chinese. As of 2016, the three most common languages in the world are: Chinese: Spoken by about 1.305 billion people Spanish: Spoken by about 427 million people in 34 different countries English: Spoken by 339 million people in 108 different countries Kiddle: Spanish Wikipedia: Spanish

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