The following is a list of countries where Spanish is an official language, plus several countries where Spanish or any language closely related to it, is an important or significant language.
Spanish is the official language (either by law or de facto) in 20 sovereign states (including Equatorial Guinea, where it is official but not a native language), one dependent territory, and one partially recognized state, totaling around 442 million people. [1] [2]
In the these countries and territories, Spanish is the main or mostly used language of communication of the vast majority of the population; official documents are written chiefly or solely in that language; and it is taught in schools and utilized as the primary medium of instruction as part of the official curriculum.
Territory | Status | Population (2021) [24] | Regulatory body | More information |
---|---|---|---|---|
Puerto Rico [lower-alpha 6] | De jure [25] | 3,142,779 | Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española | Puerto Rican Spanish |
Spanish is a secondary language, co-official with Arabic as the primary language.
State | Status | More information |
---|---|---|
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic [lower-alpha 7] | De facto [26] | Saharan Spanish |
Notes:
Though not an official language at the national level, Spanish is regularly spoken by significant populations throughout these countries. Public services, education, and information are widely available in Spanish, as are various forms of printed and broadcast media.
Territory | Population (2022) [3] | Total speakers | Percentage Spanish-speaking |
---|---|---|---|
Andorra | 85,468 | ~40,000 | 48.6% |
Belize | 419,137 | 165,296 (year 2010) [27] | 56.6% (year 2010) [27] |
Gibraltar | 34,003 | 25,500 | 75% |
United States | 339,665,118 | ~60,000,000 | 19% |
Spanish is not the official language of Andorra but holds a special status in some fields, namely in education and business. [28] Public education in Spanish (following the Spanish public education system) is offered in the country. It is the second-most spoken language in the country, with nearly half of the population conversant in Spanish, rivaling the official Catalan in both native and total speaker numbers. [29] Spanish has also emerged as the lingua franca between various linguistic groups and in the commercial sector, which has triggered government efforts to promote the more general and universal use of Catalan. [30] In 2008, 30.8% of students were enrolled in the Spanish education system. [31]
Spanish has no official recognition in the Central American nation of Belize, a Commonwealth of Nations member state where English is the official national language. However, the country shares land borders with Spanish-speaking Mexico and Guatemala and, per the 2010 Belizean census, Spanish is spoken by a sizable portion of the population; 30% claim Spanish as a mother tongue and about 50% of the population has a working knowledge of the language. [32] The Census Report 2010 reported that 56.6% of Belizeans spoke Spanish. [27]
Spanish is not official in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, which shares its only land border with Spain. Nevertheless, Spanish is compulsory for secondary school students and a mixture of Spanish and English called Llanito is colloquially spoken among most inhabitants. Recent trends since the 2000s have found, however, that Spanish proficiency and usage among younger generations is declining as members of these groups tend to use English exclusively. [33] [34]
Spanish has been spoken in the United States for several centuries in the Southwest and Florida, which were all once part of New Spain. However, today only a minority of Spanish speakers in the U.S. trace their language back to those times; the overwhelming majority of speakers come from recent immigration. Only in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado there have been Spanish-speaking communities uninterruptedly since colonial times. [35]
Spanish is the most studied foreign language in United States schools and is spoken as a native tongue by 41 million people, plus an additional 11 million fluent second-language speakers. [36] Though not official, Spanish has a special status in the American state of New Mexico. [37] With almost 60 million native speakers and second language speakers, the United States now has the second-largest Spanish-speaking population in the world after Mexico. [38] Spanish is increasingly used alongside English nationwide in business and politics. Media in Spanish has also become influential outside of native Hispanophone circles. [39] [40] In the United States, the language is regulated by the North American Academy of the Spanish Language.
Spanish was the official language of the Philippines from the beginning of the Hispanic period in 1565 and through independence until a constitutional change in 1973. However, President Ferdinand Marcos had Spanish redesignated as an official language under Presidential Decree No. 156, dated 15 March 1973 and Spanish remained official until 1987, when it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. [41] Additionally, the present Philippine Constitution, in its Article XIV, [42] stipulates that the Government shall provide the people of the Philippines with a Spanish-language translation of the Constitution. [43] The article was invoked and applied when, in 2015, Senator Loren Legarda introduced a Senate Bill requesting an act intended to provide translations of the Philippine Constitution into several specific languages, including Spanish. [44] The bill was accepted and approved. [45] Beyond the Constitution, the Philippine Department of Education issued DECS Order No. 33 in 1987, requiring schools to include Spanish and Arabic when offering foreign language courses, pointing out the relevance of both languages "in the development of Philippine history and culture". [46]
On 8 August 2007, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced that the Philippine government asked for help from the Spanish Government in her plan to reintroduce Spanish as a required subject in the Philippine school system. [47] By 2012, the language was a compulsory subject at only a very select number of secondary schools. [48] Despite government promotion of Spanish, only about 400,000 people, which accounts for under 0.5% of the population, can speak Spanish at least proficiently. [49] [50]
While Spanish is designated as an optional government language in the Philippines, its usage is very limited and not present in everyday life. Despite this, Tagalog and other native Philippine languages incorporate a large number of Spanish loanwords, as a result of 300 years of Spanish influence. In the country, Spanish is regulated by the Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language.
Spanish is an official language, alongside Arabic, of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, [51] a partially recognized state that claims Western Sahara. The territory, a former Spanish colony now mostly occupied by Morocco, is regarded as a non-self-governing territory by the United Nations. Although Spanish is not commonly spoken as a native language in Western Sahara, it is widely used as a secondary language in the region's SADR-controlled area, while the Moroccan government uses Arabic and French in administrating the Moroccan-occupied area. [52] [53]
There are several Spanish-based creole languages. Chavacano is spoken in Zamboanga City in the Philippines and is a regional language. [54] Papiamento is the official language in Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao; it has been classified as either a Spanish-based or a Portuguese-based creole. [55] [56]
Chamorro is an Austronesian language with many Spanish loanwords; some scholars have considered it a creole, but the most authoritative sources deny this. [57]
Country | Creole language | Estimated speakers [58] | Year | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|
Aruba | Papiamento | ~100,000 [59] | — | Official [60] |
Caribbean Netherlands | Papiamento | – | – | Official [61] |
Curaçao | Papiamento | 185,155 [62] | 1981 | Official [63] |
Philippines | Chavacano | 689,000 [62] | 1992 | Regional [54] |
Judeo-Spanish (sometimes known as Ladino or other names) is a language derived from medieval Spanish; it is still spoken by some Sephardi Jews, mainly in Israel. [64]
Spanish or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 600 million when including speakers as a second language. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico.
The United States does not have an official language. English and Spanish are the most widely used languages in the U.S.
The Spanish language has two names: español and castellano. Spanish speakers from different countries or backgrounds can show a preference for one term or the other, or use them indiscriminately, but political issues or common usage might lead speakers to prefer one term over the other. This article identifies the differences between those terms, the countries or backgrounds that show a preference for one or the other, and the implications the choice of words might have for a native Spanish speaker.
The Iberian Romance, Ibero-Romance or sometimes Iberian languages are a group of Romance languages that developed on the Iberian Peninsula, an area consisting primarily of Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Andorra and southern France. They are today more commonly separated into West Iberian and Occitano-Romance language groups.
A Spanish creole, or Spanish-based creole language, is a creole language for which Spanish serves as its substantial lexifier.
Of the languages of France, French is the sole official language according to the second article of the French Constitution. French, a Gallo-Romance language, is spoken by nearly the entire population of France.
There are some 130 to 195 languages spoken in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. Almost all are Malayo-Polynesian languages native to the archipelago. A number of Spanish-influenced creole varieties generally called Chavacano along with some local varieties of Chinese are also spoken in certain communities. The 1987 constitution designates Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog, as the national language and an official language along with English. Filipino is regulated by Commission on the Filipino Language and serves as a lingua franca used by Filipinos of various ethnolinguistic backgrounds.
Chavacano or Chabacano is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of speakers. Other currently existing varieties are found in Cavite City and Ternate, located in the Cavite province on the island of Luzon. Chavacano is the only Spanish-based creole in Asia. The 2020 Census of Population and Housing counted 106,000 households generally speaking Chavacano.
Spanish was the sole official language of the Philippines throughout its more than three centuries of Spanish rule, from the late 16th century to 1898, then a co-official language under its American rule, a status it retained after independence in 1946. Its status was initially removed in 1973 by a constitutional change, but after a few months it was once again designated an official language by a presidential decree. However, with the adoption of the present Constitution, in 1987, Spanish became designated as an auxiliary or "optional and voluntary language".
Hispanophone refers to anything related to the Spanish language.
A national language is a language that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the territory of a country may be referred to informally or designated in legislation as national languages of the country. National languages are mentioned in over 150 world constitutions.
Official multilingualism is the policy adopted by some states of recognizing multiple languages as official and producing all official documents, and handling all correspondence and official dealings, including court procedure, in these languages. It is distinct from personal multilingualism, the capacity of a person to speak several languages.
The Constitution of Mexico does not declare an official language; however, Spanish is the de facto national language spoken by over 99% of the population making it the largest Spanish speaking country in the world. Due to the cultural influence of the United States, American English is widely understood, especially in border states and tourist regions, with a hybridization of Spanglish spoken. The government also recognizes 63 indigenous languages spoken in their communities out of respect, including Nahuatl, Mayan, Mixtec, etc.
The historic and official language of Andorra is Catalan, a Romance language. Because of immigration, historical links, and close geographic proximity, Spanish and French are commonly spoken. There is a sizeable immigrant community that speaks Portuguese. Most Andorran residents can speak one or more of these, in addition to Catalan. Spanish was the most common mother tongue in Andorra according to mother tongue percentage statistics by the Andorran Government released in 2018. In 2022, Catalan became the most common mother tongue used by 55.2% of the Andorran population.
Spanish Filipino are an ethnic and a multilingualistic group native to the Philippines. They consist of Spaniards, Filipino mestizos, Spanish-speaking Filipinos, hispanicized Filipinos, and hispanic people from South America who are citizens of the Philippines or are descendants of the original European settlers who inter-married with native Filipinos during the Spanish colonial period. Many of their communities trace their ancestry to the early settlers from Spain and Latin America, and depending on the specific province in the Philippines, they formed as much as 19% in the capital city of Manila at formerly named Tondo province, and about 1.38% of the Ilocos region, 2.17% of Cebu or 16.72% of Bataan and other parts of the country.
Hispanicization refers to the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by Hispanic culture or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-Hispanic becomes Hispanic. Hispanicization is illustrated by spoken Spanish, production and consumption of Hispanic food, Spanish language music, and participation in Hispanic festivals and holidays. In the former Spanish colonies, the term is also used in the narrow linguistic sense of the Spanish language replacing indigenous languages.
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as the Sahrawi Republic and Western Sahara, is a partially recognized state, recognised by 46 UN member states and South Ossetia, located in the western Maghreb, which claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of that territory. Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony. The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea.
Many countries and national censuses currently enumerate or have previously enumerated their populations by languages, native language, home language, level of knowing language or a combination of these characteristics.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)The main nuclei of Spanish speech in the United States are northern New Mexico / southern Colorado, the border territories from California through Texas, the Florida peninsula, New York City, and other large cities of the Northeast and Midwest. Only one of these, the New Mexico / Colorado dialect area, has maintained linguistic continuity since colonial days, and its speech goes back to about 1600.
Artikel 2: De officiële talen zijn het Engels, het Nederlands en het Papiamento. (English: Article 2: The official languages are English, Dutch and Papiamento)