Spanish

Spanish (/spn/ (About this sound listen); About this sound

espaol (helpinfo)), also called Castilian[4] (/kstlin/ (About
this sound listen), About this sound castellano (helpinfo)), is a
Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain
and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers around the
world. It is usually considered the world's second-most spoken
native language, after Mandarin Chinese.[5][6][7][8][9] Spanish is
a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved
from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of
the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin
texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the
9th century,[10] and the first systematic written use of the
language happened in Toledo, then capital of the Kingdom of
Castile, in the 13th century. Beginning in the early 16th century,
Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most
notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania
and the Philippines.[11]

Around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Ancient

Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary,
especially through Latin, where it had a great impact.[12][13]

Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with

Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian
Peninsula.[14][15][16][17] With around 8% of its vocabulary
being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important
influence after Latin.[14][18][19] It has also been influenced by
Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages.[14]
It also adopted words from non-Iberian languages such as Gothic
language from the Visigoths[20] in which many Spanish names
and surnames have a Visigothic origin. It has absorbed vocabulary
from other languages, particularly the Romance languages
French, Italian, Occitan, and Sardinian, as well as from Nahuatl,
Quechua, and other indigenous languages of the Americas.

Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

It is also used as an official language by the European Union, the
Organization of American States, the Union of South American
Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States,
and by many other international organizations