Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It originated in the Kingdom of Castile, a kingdom in north-central Iberia. Today, it is a global language with 519 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 636 million speakers total, including second-language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 21 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, with 130M speakers, almost triple that of the United States of America.
Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas.
As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin. About 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is Latin in origin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Alongside English and French, it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world.Spanish in the World , Language Magazine, 18 November 2019. Spanish is well represented in the humanities and social sciences. Spanish is also the third most used language on the internet by number of users after English and Chinese and the second most used language by number of websites after English.
Spanish is used as an official language by many international organizations, including the United Nations, European Union, Organization of Ibero-American States, Organization of American States, Union of South American Nations, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, African Union, and others.
Name of the language and etymology
Name of the language In Spain and some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only but also (Castilian), the language from the Kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, Catalan/Valencian, Aragonese, Occitan and other minor languages.
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the official language of the whole of Spain, in contrast to (). Article III reads as follows:
The Royal Spanish Academy (), on the other hand, currently uses the term in its publications. However, from 1713 to 1923, it called the language .
The (a language guide published by the Royal Spanish Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms— and —are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, 2005, p. 271–272.
Etymology The term is related to Castile ( or archaically ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name Castile, in turn, is usually assumed to be derived from ('castle').
In the Middle Ages, the language spoken in Castile was generically referred to as and later also as . Later in the period, it gained geographical specification as (, ), , and ultimately simply as (noun).
Different etymologies have been suggested for the term (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, derives from the Occitan word and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin * ('of Hispania'). Hispania was the Roman name for the entire Iberian Peninsula.
There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that the classic or took the suffix from Vulgar Latin, as happened with other words such as (Breton) or (Saxon).
History
Like the other Romance languages, the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages, and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque, Iberian, Lusitanian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.
The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages—Mozarabic (Andalusi Romance), Navarro-Aragonese, Leonese, Catalan/Valencian, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan, and later, French and Italian. Spanish also borrowed a considerable number of words from Andalusi Arabic, and a few from Basque. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin in use at that time.
According to the theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos, and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo, where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and, according to some authors, was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the , and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus, much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic-derived words, make up about 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language was developed in the cities of Toledo, in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid, from the 1570s.
The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin > Spanish ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short and —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table: Latin Spanish Ladino Aragonese Asturian Galician Portuguese Catalan Gascon / Occitan French Sardinian Italian Romanian English , pedra, 'stone' 'land' 'dies (v.)' morte, morti 'death'
Spanish is marked by palatalization of the Latin double consonants (geminates) and (thus Latin > Spanish , and Latin > Spanish ).
The consonant written or in Latin and pronounced in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with the consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic and .
Typical of Spanish (as also of neighboring Gascon extending as far north as the Gironde estuary, and found in a small area of Calabria), attributed by some scholars to a Basque substratum was the mutation of Latin initial into whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The , still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects, it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and neighboring Romance languages, there are many -/- doublets in modern Spanish: and (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), and (both Spanish for "smith"), and (both Spanish for "iron"), and and (both words pertaining to depth in Spanish, though means "bottom", while means "deep"); additionally, ("to make") is cognate to the root word of ("to satisfy"), and ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of ("satisfied").
Compare the examples in the following table: Latin Spanish Ladino Aragonese Asturian Galician Portuguese Catalan Gascon / Occitan French Sardinian Italian Romanian English (or ) , fizu, fìgiu, fillu 'son' , , (or ) fàghere, fàere, 'to do' (calentura) , , (or) 'fever' , , 'fire' Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table: Latin Spanish Ladino Aragonese Asturian Galician Portuguese Catalan Gascon / Occitan French Sardinian Italian Romanian English giae, crae, 'key' , 'flame' , 'plenty, full' , () , , , 'eight' muito (arch.) , , 'much,very,many'
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the , which resulted in the distinctive velar pronunciation of the letter and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental ("th-sound") for the letter (and for before or ). See History of Spanish (Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants) for details.
The , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to the grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."
From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called ("the language of Cervantes").
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.
Geographical distribution
Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2025, it is estimated that about 519 million people speak Spanish as a native language, making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers. Estimate. Corrected as Equatorial Guinea is mistakenly included (no native speakers there) An additional 117 million speak Spanish as a second or foreign language, making it the fourth most spoken language in the world overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi with a total number of 636 million speakers. Spanish is also the third most used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese.
Europe
Spanish is the official language of Spain. Upon the emergence of the Castilian Crown as the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the Middle Ages, the Romance vernacular associated with this polity became increasingly used in instances of prestige and influence, and the distinction between "Castilian" and "Spanish" started to become blurred. Hard policies imposing the language's hegemony in an intensely centralising Spanish state were established from the 18th century onward.
Other European territories in which it is also widely spoken include Gibraltar and Andorra.