I.

Introduction

Spanish Language, member of the Romance group in the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European language family, spoken chiefly in the Iberian peninsula and in Latin America by an estimated 382 million people, including second-language speakers. It is also known as Castilian, after the dialect from which modern Spanish developed. The Spanish language was carried by Spanish colonists to the Canary Islands, the Antilles, the Philippines, southern North America, the greater part of South America, and the coast of Africa. In the Iberian peninsula the Spanish-language area does not coincide exactly with the political boundaries of Spain. Spain contains three non-Spanish-speaking regions: Galicia, in the north-west, where Galician, or Gallego (technically closer to Portuguese than Spanish) is spoken and holds official status; the Basque provinces, in the north, where Basque, a unique agglutinative language, is spoken and holds official status; and Catalonia, along the east coast, where Catalan, also a Romance language, is spoken and holds official status. Catalan is also spoken in the Balearic Islands; in Andorra, where it is the official language; in France, in the Pyrénées-Orientales; and in parts of Italy, South America, Switzerland, and the United States.