Spanish (español) is a Romance language named for its origins as the native tongue of a large proportion of the inhabitants of Spain. It is also named Castilian (castellano listen (help·info)) after the Spanish region of Castile where it originated. Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese.
In 1999 there were, according to Ethnologue, 358 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a t...
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Spanish (español) is a Romance language named for its origins as the native tongue of a large proportion of the inhabitants of Spain. It is also named Castilian (castellano listen (help·info)) after the Spanish region of Castile where it originated. Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese.
In 1999 there were, according to Ethnologue, 358 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 417 million speakers worldwide. Currently these figures are up to 400 and 500 million people respectively. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and is used as an official language by the European Union and Mercosur.
Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of spoken Latin in central-northern Iberia around the ninth century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile (present northern...
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