How many nations in the globe have Spanish as their primary language? How many people worldwide are fluent in Spanish? Find out all. More than 20 countries have a significant Spanish-speaking population, while more than 70 countries have a sizeable Spanish-speaking population.
History of Spanish Language
Spanish is also known as Castilian, after the dialect from which contemporary standard Spanish evolved (mostly in Latin America, but also increasingly in Spain itself). When Spain was retaken from the Moors in the 11th century, this dialect, which originated in Cantabria near the town of Burgos in north-central Spain (Old Castile), expanded southward to central Spain (New Castile) around Madrid and Toledo.
Castilian became Spain’s official language after the kingdoms of Castile and Leon and Aragon joined in the late 15th century. Aragon, Navarra, Leon, Asturias, and Santander’s regional languages were gradually displaced and are now only spoken in isolated rural regions. Galician, a language spoken in northwest Spain that shares a lot of similarities with Portuguese.
One of the most widely spoken languages in the world is Spanish. One of the four foreign languages that can be useful, Spanish is spoken in more than 25 nations throughout the world.
Many prominent international organizations, including the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and several other global institutions, have made it one of their official working languages.
Which Country or Continent Has the Most Speakers of the Spanish Language?
That distinction of having the largest population of Spanish-speaking people in the world is now held by the Americas. These details are:
Mexico has 110 million speakers, which is the most.
Colombia is following.
At roughly 41 million, the United States and Argentina are tied. Following them are Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Cuba.
There are about 470 million Spanish speakers in the Americas.
How many countries speak Spanish?
If your following question is, “How many countries speak Spanish?” We can let you know that Spanish is an official language in 20 different nations.
This is the confirmed list:
Argentina
Bolivia
Chile
Colombia
In Costa Rica
Cuba
Republic of the Dominica
Ecuador
South America
Equitable Guinea
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Spain
Uruguay
Venezuela
Despite not being an official language, Spanish is widely used in Gibraltar, Belize, the United States, and Andorra. We’ll go into the evolution of the Spanish language on continents like:
Asia
Africa
Europe
The Americas
Asia
Asia has been home to the Spanish language since the sixteenth century when Spanish explorers invaded the Philippines and set out to impose their rule and propagate Christianity. Asia is the region with the fewest speakers of the Spanish language. The upper class, including businessmen, academics, missionaries, and the local court, spoke Spanish here primarily. However, despite Spanish being the primary language of instruction throughout the nineteenth century and the country’s primary tongue until the middle of the twentieth, American control of the islands and nationalist sentiments significantly decreased the number of Spanish speakers in the Philippines. Spanish lost its status as the official language of the Philippines for a brief period in 1973 and finally in 1987.
The Americas
Spanish was initially spoken on the continents of North and South America when Christopher Columbus first arrived there in 1492. The Catholic Church invested in helping the locals learn Spanish with the intention of converting them to Christianity.
Also read: 7 Benefits of learning Spanish: A guide to help your journey
As the students in the institutions grew older, Spanish became the dominant tongue, but due to the impact of regional tribal tongues, the Latin American dialect of Spanish differed from Castilian on a local level. The pronunciation patterns in Latin America were impacted by the Andalusian ancestry of the earliest explorers. Furthermore, 11 million individuals in Latin America continue to speak their native tongues.
Europe
Prior to the Middle Ages, Latin was the primary tongue spoken in Spain, the country where the Spanish language originated, as a result of the influence of Roman control. The various kingdoms of Spain created a variety of Latin dialects throughout this period as they moved south to purge the peninsula of Moorish Arabs.
The Reconquista saw the once-minor kingdom of Castile rise to prominence, and King Alfonso X started the process of establishing Castilian as the official language of his realm. Castilian is now used for administration, culture, and history.
Africa
Spanish speakers can exercise their linguistic muscles in Equatorial Guinea despite the fact that there is only one Spanish-speaking nation in all of Africa (and that the continent was only truly opened up to Europeans in the nineteenth century, decades after the height of Spanish colonisation).
Spanish, Portuguese, and French are the official languages in Equatorial Guinea, which is on the western coast of the continent. This is because Portugal ceded the region to Spain in 1778, and Spain later gave up control of Equatorial Guinea in 1968.
Spanish in Equatorial Guinea is comparable to that of Latin America and Spain. Although the language has developed in a really interesting, independent way, this is largely due to the country’s inherent geographic isolation as well as forced political isolation between 1968 and 1979 under the dictatorship of Francisco Macas Nguema, who is regarded as one of the most brutal dictators in African history.
