Spanish Translation

Spanish is a Romance language (Indo-European family) spoken by over 358 million people in Spain, the Americas, Australia and Africa. At the turn of the 21^st century, Mexico had the largest number of speakers (over 85 million people), followed by Colombia (over 40 million people), Argentina (over 35 million people), the United States (over 31 million people) and Spain (over 30 million people). Spanish is the official language of all these countries except the United States. The first texts written in Spanish, in the form of glosses on Latin texts, date from the 10^th century and works of Spanish literature appeared for the first time around the year 1150.

Spanish is also known (especially in Latin America, but increasingly in Spain) as Castilian, from which the standard Spanish dialect developed.  This dialect emerged in the 9^th century in the city of Burgos in northern Spain (Castile) and gradually spread to the centre of the country (New Castile) around Madrid and Toledo in the 11^th century with the re-conquest from the Moors.

At the end of the 15^th century, the Kingdoms of Castile and Leon united with the Kingdom of Aragon and Castilian became the official language throughout the whole of Spain. The regional dialects of Aragon, Navarre, Leon, Asturias and Santander gradually disappeared and today only survive in small isolated rural areas. Galician (a language with many similarities to Portuguese), spoken in the Northwest of Spain, and Catalan, spoken in the Northeast, also faded considerably, but witnessed a resurgence at the end of the 20^th century.

Outside the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish is spoken in practically all the countries of Central and South America, except in Brazil (where Portuguese is spoken).  Spanish is also spoken on the Canary Islands, in parts of Morocco and in the Philippines.