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Article: Spanish language
- Article from:
- The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
CopyrightThe Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information)
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Spanish language member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see
Romance languages
). The official language of Spain and 19 Latin American nations, Spanish is spoken as a first language by about 330 million persons and as a second language by perhaps another 50 million. It is the mother tongue of about 40 million people in Spain, where the language originated and whence it was later brought by Spanish explorers, colonists, and empire-builders to the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world during the last five centuries. It is the native language of over 17 million people in the United States, and is one of the official languages ...
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