Languages

Spanish

Also Known As español / castellano

Citation Formats

General Reference

Language Atlas. "Spanish." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/spanish.

APA Style

Language Atlas. (n.d.). Spanish. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/spanish

BibTeX

@misc{languageatlas-spanish,
  author = {Language Atlas},
  title = {Spanish},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://language.interactiveatlas.org/languages/spanish},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Spanish is a Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin as spoken on the Iberian peninsula, spread worldwide from the sixteenth century onward by Spanish colonization and today the official language of twenty countries, more than any other language. It is written in the Latin alphabet and is notable among major world languages for an unusually regular relationship between spelling and pronunciation. Its closest relatives are the other Ibero-Romance languages, Portuguese, Catalan and Galician, all descended from the same Vulgar Latin base.

Facts

ISO 639-3 Code

spa 1

Speaker Count

560,000,000 1

Status

Living 1

Attested From (Year)

from 800 2

9th century; the earliest documents showing traces of the precursor of modern Spanish date to this century.

Region

Spain; Hispanic America including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico; Equatorial Guinea; Puerto Rico; significant presence in the United States 2

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Latin

This source names Spanish directly: "the ancestor of the Romance languages, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and others."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)

Latin

This source names Latin directly: "Romance language descended from Vulgar Latin as spoken on the Iberian peninsula, spread worldwide from the sixteenth century onward by Spanish colonization and today the official language of twenty..."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)