Spanish is the second most widely spoken language after Chinese, which is spoken by over a billion people. Spanish speakers surpass English as English falls in third place with 335 million native speakers around the world. While there are roughly over 500 million Spanish speakers if you include non-native speakers.

Spanish is the official language of 21 countries around the world in Europe, Africa, Central, South and North America. In addition to these 21 sovereign states, it is also used as a key language for a couple of dependent territories. Spanish comes in fourth place as the most widespread language in terms of countries, with English (112) at number one then French (60) then Arabic (57).

One major differences between English and Spanish is reading and pronunciation. Spanish is a phonetic language, which means that each letter is pronounced consistently and represents a certain sound. Thanks to the phonetic nature of Spanish it is one of the simpler languages for people to learn, particularly in terms of Spanish word spelling and speaking.

The Royal Spanish Academy is the official authority responsible for the Spanish language. Headquartered in Madrid it runs multiple language academies through the Association of Spanish Language Academies in the 21 other Spanish-speaking countries.The Academy began in the 18th century and has published dictionaries and grammar rule books, which have since been officially implemented across the Spanish-speaking world.

Spain Spanish and Spanish that is spoken in Latin America hold multiple differences. The language was spread from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin countries through colonization. Each colony developed differently and thus grew different cultures and ways of speaking the language. One example of this is the use of 'vos.' In Spain, this is used as for second-person plural to mean "you all," however in Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, it is used as a polite second-person singular pronoun.