Did you know that Spanish has one of the largest numbers of speakers of any language? It’s now one of the top choices when it comes to language learning. But how much do you know about it? Here at Aadimatiq today we’d like to share with you the most amazing fun facts about Spanish.
How many people speak Spanish worldwide?
Spanish is an extremely appealing language. Apart from Spanish-speaking countries, more and more people are deciding to learn it. The latest figures from Statista show that Spanish is the fourth most spoken language on Earth.
In 2021, there were approximately 534 million Spanish speakers (with all their variations and dialects) of which 460 million were mother-tongue speakers. This means that over 6% of the world’s population is a native speaker of the language.
These findings are in line with reports compiled by the Cervantes Institute, which estimates that on current trends the number of Spanish speakers could reach 724 million by 2068. Surprised by the figure? Well, just wait: in the United States alone, 8 million people learn the language every year while a further 6 million do so in Brazil.
The most amazing fun facts about Spanish
- It’s one of the most widely spoken languages in the world behind only Chinese, which has about 1.2 billion speakers, and English, which has over 600 million.
- Spanish is the foremost language in the western hemisphere.
- It’s spoken in more than 44 countries.
- Mexico is the largest Spanish-speaking country.
- It has around 300,000 distinct words or concepts, albeit the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE) dictionary only lists 93,000.
- Spanish scoops the gold medal for the fastest language to speak. This is measured by the number of syllables which an average speaker can say in one second.
- The accent on the ñ was originally another n which was written above the larger one as an abbreviation. Over time it flattened out to the form we know today, pronounced eñe.
So as you can see, like any other language Spanish has its intriguing and unusual features which are well worth knowing. We’re pretty sure there must have been at least one or two you hadn’t heard of! We hope you found these fun facts about Spanish interesting. If you’d like to learn lots more about other languages, don’t miss our social media and new blog posts.
