7 Interesting Facts About The Spanish Language

Ready to learn a few interesting facts about the Spanish language?

1. Spanish is the 2nd most-spoken language as a mother tongue. The number of Spanish speakers as a native language is around 400 million. The language with the highest number of native speakers is Manadrin Chinese with 1.2 billion people.

2. Spanish is the official language in 21 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

3. Based on estimates from Census data, the Hispanic population in the United States will grow to 132.8 million in 2050, and Spanish will be the first language of 50% of the US population in the next 50 years.

4. Spanish is the 3rd most-used language on the Internet, with 257 million users and is one of the 6 official languages of the UN.

5. Spanish is belongs to the romance language family due to its strong latin roots, and it is strongly related to French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Spanish on average for most English speakers is easy to pick up and you can achieve conversational fluency within 6 months of studying the language.

6. Spanish (Español) is also known as Castilian (Castellano), owing to its origins as the language of Castile, a region in central Spain.

7. Arabic

greatly influenced the Spanish language. Arab armies started to conquer the Iberian Peninsula in 711, bringing Arabic art, architecture and language to the region. Arabic gradually mixed with old Spanish to become the language spoken today. When Spain expelled the Arabs in 1492, the language retained some 8,000 Arabic words. Apart from Latin, Arabic is the largest contributor to Spanish. Many words that you already know in Spanish come from Arabic, such as la alfombra (carpet), la almendra (almond) la almohada (pillow). When you travel through Spain, you’ll come across many places, regions and names of historic sites that come from Arabic, such as El Alhambra.