Spanish Language Guide

Official language in
Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Spain, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, El Salvador, Venezuela
Also spoken in
Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay
Script
Latin
Speakers
520M (2025)

Where it's spoken

In Spain, the constitution makes Castilian the official Spanish language of the State, which all Spaniards have the duty to know and the right to use, and adds that the other Spanish languages are also official in their respective Self-governing Communities. Spanish is likewise the official language named in the constitutions of Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama.

In several countries the constitution names Spanish together with indigenous languages. Colombia and Venezuela make Spanish official while giving official status to the languages of ethnic or native peoples in their own territories; Ecuador calls Spanish its official language and Spanish, Kichwa and Shuar the official languages for intercultural relations; Peru names Spanish and, where they predominate, Quechua, Aymara and the other native tongues; Bolivia requires the state and each autonomous government to use at least two official languages, one of which must be Spanish; and Paraguay, which its constitution calls a multicultural and bilingual country, makes Castilian and Guaraní official. Outside the Americas and Europe, the constitution of Equatorial Guinea lists Spanish among the official languages of the Republic.

Those are the countries whose constitutional text was checked for this guide. The Instituto Cervantes counts a wider set of Spanish-speaking countries, in which Spanish is official, national, vehicular or in any case the majority language, and its table is headed by Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Argentina in that order of population. Vocabulary differs across that space, and the cards say so where it matters: the card for ¿Dónde está el baño? ("Where is the toilet?") notes that in Spain el servicio or los aseos is more usual than el baño.

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Script & pronunciation

Spanish is written in the Latin alphabet. The academies' spelling reference sets the alphabet at twenty-seven letters, from a to z with ñ among them, and excludes the digraphs ch and ll from that list on the grounds that they are two letters representing a single sound; both digraphs go on being written as before, and words containing them are alphabetised under c and under l. This app's Spanish cards show the Spanish spelling only, with no romanized reading beside it.

Two marks are worth knowing before reading any sign or menu. The first is the pair of opening marks: the academies state that in Spanish it is obligatory always to write the opening sign, which must not be dropped in imitation of other languages, and that it goes where the question or the exclamation begins rather than automatically at the head of the sentence. The cards follow the rule throughout, as in ¿Cuánto cuesta? ("How much is it?") and Gracias, ¡hasta luego! ("Thanks, see you"). The second is the accent used to tell apart two words of identical shape, one stressed and one unstressed: that is why the card for "Yes" is written Sí.

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Grammar essentials

Nouns and adjectives carry gender and number, and the words around them agree. The general order inside a noun phrase is determiner, then the noun, then the adjective, and an adjective used as a predicate agrees with the subject, as in Mis compañeras son alemanas. The academies' grammar notes that an adjective takes the masculine or the feminine form according to the person it refers to, so that both Yo soy alto and Yo soy alta are correct. Travellers meet the same choice on the cards: ¡Bienvenido/a a España! ("Welcome to Spain!") gives the masculine bienvenido and the feminine bienvenida side by side.

A statement is made negative by putting no in front of the verb: the Instituto Cervantes syllabus contrasts Soy español with No soy español, and this app's card No entiendo ("I don't understand") is built the same way. Questions need no change of word order to be understood as questions, because the opening and closing marks do the work in writing, as in ¿Qué es esto? ("What is this?") and ¿Habla inglés? ("Do you speak English?").

The subject pronoun is often left out, since the verb ending already carries the person; the card ¿Cómo se llama? ("What's your name?") has no pronoun in it at all. Here too usage varies by region: the same syllabus records a tendency in the Caribbean towards an explicit pronoun subject with subject–verb–object order.

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Politeness & etiquette

Spanish marks respect with a separate pronoun. The Instituto Cervantes syllabus treats usted and ustedes as pronouns of address, with their own agreement and their own imperative forms, and the verb with them takes the third person rather than the second. This app's card for usted gives it as "You (formal)" and calls it the polite form for strangers and staff, while the card for ¿Cómo se llama? notes that with friends the question is ¿Cómo te llamas?.

Which pronouns are available depends on where you are, so no single rule covers the whole language. The syllabus marks the form vos for the second person singular in the voseo areas of Latin America, together with the matching prepositional forms con vos, a vos and para vos. It marks exclusive tuteo, with no vos, for Mexico apart from Chiapas and for the Caribbean. And it marks the exclusive use of ustedes for the second person plural, and the absence of the vosotros forms, for Latin America and for the southern varieties of Spain and the Canary Islands.

The cards carry the same regional caution. The card for usted notes that friends use tú and that Central America and the Southern Cone use vos, and the card for Cinco minutos de descanso, bebed agua. ("Five-minute break, drink some water.") explains that bebed is the vosotros imperative used in Spain and that Latin America, having no vosotros, would say beban agua in the ustedes form. For a traveller the practical consequence is that usted and ustedes are understood everywhere, while tú, vos and vosotros each belong to particular places.

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