Which Countries in the World Speak Spanish?
- Spain is one of more than 20 countries whose people speak Spanish.flag of spain image by patrimonio designs from Fotolia.com
According to a 1999 survey by the Summer Institute for Linguistics, Spanish is second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of native speakers of the language. Other estimates conclude that Spanish is just ahead or just behind English and Hindi. Roughly 330 million people in North America, South America, the Caribbean and Europe are native Spanish speakers, and Spanish is the official language in more than 20 countries. - South America has more native Spanish speakers than any other continent. Spanish is the official language in nine South American countries with a combined population of more than 145 million: Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina. Indigenous languages, such as Quechua, exist alongside Spanish in South America.
- North America is No. 2 in native Spanish speakers because of Mexico. Spanish is Mexico's official language. Although some Mexicans speak indigenous languages, such as Nahuatl and Mayan, most of the country's 100 million people speak Spanish as their first language. The United States does not have an official language, but the U.S. Census Bureau estimates 34 million U.S. Hispanics, more than 12 percent of the American population, speak Spanish.
- The U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico joins eight Spanish-speaking countries in Central America and the Caribbean: Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. More than 52 million people live in those nine areas, and Puerto Rico is the only one of the nine in which most residents speak English in addition to Spanish.
- Spain has 39 million people, most of whom speak Spanish, although such languages as Catalan and Basque are common. Spanish colonization from the 16th century to the 19th century spread the Spanish language around the world. Along with French and regional dialects, Spanish is an official language of Equatorial Guinea, a country on the western coast of Africa with a population of 676,000. Spanish speakers also are common in the Philippines, a former Spanish possession, and in North Africa, home to many Spanish emigrants.
