Spanish Language, official language of Spain and the native language of 322 million to 358 million people in the world. Many of those people live in the other countries where Spanish is the official language: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the official language of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and is widely spoken in several other nations, including Canada, Morocco, the Philippines, and the United States.

The Spanish language boasts a literary history that includes authors such as Miguel de Cervantes of Spain, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda of Chile, and Octavio Paz of Mexico. See Spanish Literature; Latin American Literature.

Spanish is a member of the Romance language group in the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European language family (see Language). Spanish has two major dialects: Andalusian and Castilian. These dialects generally differ in pronunciation of the letter combinations ce, ze, and za. Speakers of the Andalusian dialect pronounce these combinations with an s sound, while Castilian speakers pronounce them with a th sound.

encarta