Español

Spanish
Castilian
español, castellano
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol], [kasteˈʎano]
Region	Spain, Hispanic America, Equatorial Guinea (see below)
Native speakers	470 million (2016) 570 million total speakers L2 speakers: 90 million (no date)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Ibero-Romance West-Iberian Castilian languages Spanish
Early form	Old Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet) Spanish Braille
Signed forms	Signed Spanish (Mexico, Spain and presumably elsewhere)
Official status
Official language in	20 countries  Argentina  Bolivia  Chile  Colombia  Costa Rica  Cuba  Dominican Republic  Ecuador  El Salvador  Equatorial Guinea  Guatemala  Honduras  Mexico  Nicaragua  Panama  Paraguay  Peru  Spain  Uruguay  Venezuela Dependent entity  Puerto Rico Commonly used  Andorra  Belize  Gibraltar  United States (some areas) Marginal role  Philippines  Western Sahara International organizations  African Union  European Union  Mercosur  Organization of American States  United Nations  Union of South American Nations (full list)
Regulated by	Association of Spanish Language Academies (Real Academia Española and 22 other national Spanish language academies)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	stan1288
Linguasphere	51-AAA-b
Spanish language in the world

Spanish (/ˈspænᵻʃ/;  español ), also called Castilian (/kæˈstɪliən/,  castellano ), is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, 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, then capital of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania and the Philippines.