THE SPANISH LANGUAGE
-Spanish is a latin language, as French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalonian, Galician or Romanian.
-Spanish is the second more spoken language in the world as mother language, only after Mandarin Chinese, with more than 420 million of native Spanish speakers. If we also count the Spanish speakers who has Spanish as second language, the number reaches 466 million people. Counting also the people who has learnt Spanish as a foreign language, 528 million people speak Spanish.
-Spanish is official language in Spain. In America is also official language in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Ecuador, Cuba, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Puerto Rico and Uruguay. In Africa is official also in Equatorial Guinea and West Sahara. In Asia is official in the Filippines Filipinas, and in Oceania in Easter Island (Chile). So Spanish is officially spoken in the five continents.
-In other countries Spanish is not official but there is an important portion of the population: In the United States more than 50 million people speaks Spanish (18% of the US population). Other countries where the number of Spanish speakers is important are France (2 million), Brazil (more than 1 million), Canada (almost 1 million) and Morocco (half million). In Andorra more than 70% speakes Spanish, in Belice 73% and in Gibraltar more than 98%. In Israel, more than 1'5 million people speaks Sephardi or Judaeo-Spanish.
