World Language Map

Where is Spanish spoken?

Spanish (castellano) is an Indo-European language, spoken in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Colombia and 35 more. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Spanish is spoken

Spanish is spoken in 39 countries: Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Colombia and 35 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Mexico83%108,514,200
Argentina100%46,994,400
Spain99%46,807,596
Colombia93%46,117,212
Philippines31%36,665,870
United States9.6%32,828,448
Venezuela82%25,625,246
Peru73%23,798,146
Chile98%18,291,406
Ecuador96%17,577,600
Guatemala88%16,064,576
Cuba100%10,966,000
France13%8,888,698
Honduras91%8,671,563
Dominican Republic78%8,436,402
Bolivia61%7,510,320
El Salvador89%5,899,543
United Kingdom8%5,476,728
Nicaragua78%5,208,021
Germany6%5,047,146
Costa Rica95%5,002,301
Panama69%3,084,466
Uruguay88%3,014,290
Puerto Rico87%2,626,922
Romania10%1,814,820
Equatorial Guinea87%1,562,372
Canada3.2%1,241,434
Portugal10%1,020,720
Paraguay3.2%240,722
Belize55%228,684
Andorra43%36,709
Gibraltar50%14,842
Curaçao3.7%5,672
Sint Maarten11%5,084
Trinidad and Tobago0.3%4,086
BrazilNot givenNot given
GuyanaNot givenNot given
HaitiNot givenNot given
MoroccoNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Spanish is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Spanish.

How many people speak Spanish?

Wikidata gives about 485 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2023). It also lists about 70.6 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2010). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Spanish sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Spanish as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Italic
  4. Latino-Faliscan
  5. Latinic
  6. Imperial Latin
  7. Romance
  8. Italo-Western Romance
  9. Western Romance
  10. Shifted Western Romance
  11. Southwestern Shifted Romance
  12. West Ibero-Romance
  13. Castilic
  14. Spanish

Related languages

Other languages in the Castilic group:

More about Spanish

Codes: ISO 639-3 spa, Glottolog stan1288. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Spanish is a Romance language, descended from Latin. Latin’s footprint: the Roman Empire at its height → Latin spread along Roman roads →

Questions about Spanish

Where is Spanish spoken?

Spanish is spoken in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Colombia and 35 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 83% of the population of Mexico, which is about 108,514,200 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Spanish?

Wikidata gives about 485 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2023). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 70.6 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2010).

Which language family is Spanish in?

Glottolog places Spanish in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Italic, Latino-Faliscan, Latinic, Imperial Latin, Romance, Italo-Western Romance, Western Romance, Shifted Western Romance, Southwestern Shifted Romance, West Ibero-Romance and Castilic.

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