Spanish language is official in 21 countries and commonly spoken in 28 countries
Spanish (sometimes called Castilian) (español or castellano in Spanish) is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia during the 9th century.
Modern Spanish developed with the readjustment of consonants (reajuste de las sibilantes) that began in 15th century. The language continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of other languages as well as developing new words. Spanish was taken most notably to the Americas as well as to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries, where it became the most important language for government and trade.
According to Ethnologue 400 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 500 million speakers worldwide. Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and used as an official language of the European Union, and Mercosur.
Due to its increasing presence in the demographics and popular culture of the United States, Spanish is widely considered to be the most beneficial second language for a native speaker of American English and is also highly regarded in the British Commonwealth, due to the language’s immense geographic extent in Latin America and Europe for tourism and the growing popularity of warmer, more affordable, and culturally vibrant retirement destinations found in the Hispanic world.
