Spanish

Where it’s spoken

Spanish (español or castellano) is the official language of Spain and most of Latin America, with the United States hosting the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking population after Mexico. The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) coordinates standards across 23 national language academies.

What it sounds like

Spanish has five clean vowels and a phonology that maps closely to its spelling. Distinctive features include the trilled “rr,” the “ñ” sound, and — in Iberian dialects — the lisped “c/z” (theta). Stress patterns are predictable, with marked exceptions indicated by written accents.

How it’s written

Spanish uses the Latin alphabet plus “ñ” and historically “ch” and “ll” as separate letters. Inverted question marks (¿) and exclamation points (¡) open sentences, a convention unique to Spanish. Spelling reforms keep written Spanish remarkably phonetic.

History

Spanish descends from Vulgar Latin spoken in the Roman province of Hispania, shaped by Visigothic and Arabic contact during the Reconquista. The 1492 Nebrija grammar was the first published grammar of any modern European language.