Spanish-speaking world

Over 600 million people speak Spanish. It is the fourth largest languages by number of speakers. It is the second largest language by number of native speakers. Spanish is the third widely spoken language.

500px|thumb|Countries and regions in which Spanish is an official language, or used by over 20% of the population.

 Summary 

Mexico is the largest Spanish-speaking country with about 130 million native speakers. There are 50 million native speakers found in Colombia, 47 million in Spain, 45 million in Argentina and 42  million in the United States.

In the European Union, Spanish is one of the 24 official languages and widely used in some institutions, and by almost all of the population in Spain and Andorra. It is a second language in some member states.

Estimates that include second language speaking vary greatly, from 360 million speakers to more than 500 million speakers. When combining native speakers and non-native speakers, Spanish is the fourth widely most spoken language worldwide.

Besides main dialects of Spanish, countries such as the United States, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Paraguay, Uruguay and Nicaragua have millions of native speakers of dialect continua. These versions range from Spanish based creole languages to Standard Spanish. Other countries such as Peru and Bolivia also use Spanish as their primary official languages.

The United States now claims to be the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. The most reliable estimate is that 20% of the population or 70 million people speak Spanish, second only to Mexico. It may be two times larger in the next decade from 2022.

 Related pages 

 Organisation internationale de la Francophonie
 English-speaking world

Category:Spanish language