Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How many countries speak Spanish?
The Association of Spanish Language Academies (, or ) is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world. It comprises the academies of 23 countries, ordered by date of Academy foundation: Spain (1713), Colombia (1871), Ecuador (1874), Mexico (1875), El Salvador (1876), Venezuela (1883), Chile (1885), Peru (1887), Guatemala (1887), Costa Rica (1923), Philippines (1924), Panama (1926), Cuba (1926),
Paraguay (1927), Dominican Republic (1927), Bolivia (1927), Nicaragua (1928), Argentina (1931), Uruguay (1943), Honduras (1949), Puerto Rico (1955), United States (1973) and Equatorial Guinea (2016).
The (Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. This organization has branched out in over 20 different countries, with 54 centers devoted to the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures and Spanish language. The ultimate goals of the Institute are to promote universally the education, the study, and the use of Spanish as a second language, to support methods and activities that help the process of Spanish-language education, and to contribute to the advancement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures in non-Spanish-speaking countries. The Institute's 2015 report "El español, una lengua viva" (Spanish, a living language) estimates that there are 559 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Among the sources cited in the report is the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimates that the U.S. will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.
According to the government of Catalonia, Spanish, locally known as Castilian, is currently the most spoken language in Catalonia (45.9% daily users of Spanish vs. 35.6% daily users of Catalan vs. 11% daily users of both Spanish and Catalan) and especially in the Barcelona metropolitan area, as well as native language and usual language of many Catalan citizens. This language is widely prevalent in the press, cinema and in daily life.
Spanish is spoken by about 90% of the country's population. In Nicaragua the Voseo form is common, just as in other countries in Central and South America like Honduras, Argentina, Uruguay or coastal Colombia. Spanish has many different dialects spoken throughout Latin America, Central American Spanish is the dialect spoken in Nicaragua. In the Caribbean coast many afro-Nicaraguans and creoles speak English and creole English as their first language. Also in the Caribbean coast, many Indigenous people speak their native languages, such as the Miskito, Sumo, Rama and Garifuna language. In addition, many ethnic groups in Nicaragua, such as the Chinese Nicaraguans and Palestinian Nicaraguans, have maintained their ancestral languages, which are minority languages, while also speaking Spanish and/or English. These minority languages include Chinese, Arabic, German, and Italian, among others.
As a part of the intense immigration process which Spain in general and Catalonia in particular have experienced over the last decade, there is a large number of immigrant languages spoken in various cultural communities in Catalonia, of which (Maghrebi) Arabic and Urdu are the most common if Spanish-speaking migrants are not taken into account.
Much as with French Americans, who are of French descent but mostly by way of Canada, the majority of the 41 million massively strong Spanish-speaking population have come by way of Latin America, especially Mexico, but also Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and other areas that the Spanish themselves colonized. Many of the Hispanic and Latino Americans bring their Spanish-speaking culture into the country. A lot of the Americans who are descended from Mexico, Puerto Rico or other places from Latin America have Spanish ancestry from Spain, but it is mixed with a different race; for example, Mexican-Americans who are identified as mestizo, which is mixed Native American and European ancestry, while others, like Puerto Ricans in the United States, are identified as Mulatto, which is mixed African and European ancestry. However, some Spanish Americans are descendants of colonial settlers in the southwestern states, especially New Mexico, before they became part of the United States.
Latin America ( or "Latinoamérica"; ; ) is the region of the Americas where Romance languages (i.e., those derived from Latin)—particularly Spanish and Portuguese, as well as French—are primarily spoken.
There are four languages with official status in Catalonia (an autonomous community of Spain): Catalan; Spanish- which is official throughout Spain; Aranese, a dialect of Occitan spoken in the Aran Valley; and Catalan Sign Language. Many other languages are spoken in Catalonia as a result of recent immigration from all over the world.
Over 55 million Hispanic and Latino Americans are residents of the United States, representing 16% of the US population. Hispanic Americans and Latino Americans ( , ) are American citizens who are descendants of immigrants from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and the Iberian peninsula. More generally, it includes all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, whether of full or partial ancestry. For the 2010 US census, the American Community Survey, "Hispanic" or "Latino" were those who identified as one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the census or ACS questionnaire ("Mexican," "Puerto Rican," or "Cuban") as well as those who indicated that they were "other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino." The peoples of countries considered as Hispanic or Latino American groups by the Census Bureau were the following: Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The Census Bureau uses the terms Hispanic and Latino interchangeably. The Census office of the United States excluded Brazilian Americans from the Hispanic and Latino American population (Brazil is part of Latin America, but Portuguese is the official language rather than Spanish). Other US government agencies have slightly different definitions of the term, including Brazilians and other Portuguese-speaking groups.
Hispanic means "of or from Spain". The term is commonly used to refer to the people and languages of what is now Spain from the historic period during the Roman Empire.
The main cause of Spanish and Catalan social bilingualism in modern Catalonia was large-scale migration from the rest of Spain during the 20th century, as Catalonia started a significant industrialization which demanded an increased workforce from elsewhere. Spanish has historically been spoken among a minority of civil servants born in other regions in Spain and among segments of the wealthiest bourgeoisie. Spanish has also been spoken as a second language by most Catalans, as it has been the only official language over long periods since the eighteenth century.
There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe – roughly 3% of the world's total. Most of the European languages are of Indo-European origin. Since the end of the 18th century, the most widespread language of Europe (both in terms of geography and the number of native speakers) has been Russian, which replaced French. Counting only native speakers, approximately 150 million Europeans speak Russian on a daily basis, followed by German (approx. 95 mil.), English and French (each by 65 mil.), Italian (60 mil.), Spanish and Polish (40 mil. each), Ukrainian (30 mil.) and Romanian (26 mil.). As far as foreign language studies are concerned, English is currently the most popular foreign language in Europe, followed by German, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish
Arabic has had a great influence on other languages, especially in vocabulary. The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries dominated by Islam or Islamic power. Arabic is a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Amharic, Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Bosnian, Chaldean, Chechen, Croatian, Dagestani, English, German, Gujarati, Hausa,
Hebrew, 
Hindi,
Kazakh, Kurdish, Kutchi, Kyrgyz, Malay (Malaysian and Indonesian), Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Rohingya, Romance languages (French, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Sicilian, Spanish, etc.) Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Sylheti, Swahili, Tagalog, Tigrinya, Turkish, Turkmen, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Visayan and Wolof as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for "book" (كتاب "kitāb") is used in most of the languages listed. Other languages such as Maltese and Nubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary. Spanish has the largest Arabic influenced vocabulary outside the Islamic world due to Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula from 711 until 1492 known as Al-Andalus, although Spain's re-christianization and resulting loss of contact with Quranic Arabic has led to a significant shift in both meaning and pronunciation of Spanish words of Arabic etymology.
The term Hispanic ( or ) broadly refers to the people, nations, and cultures that have a historical link to the Spanish language or the country of Spain, depending on the context.
Catholic Christianity is the largest religion in Spain, but practical secularization is strong. Only 3% of Spaniards consider religion as one of their three most important values, even lower than the 5% European average. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 abolished Catholicism as the official state religion, while recognizing the role it plays in Spanish society. As a result, there is no official religion and religious freedom is protected.
According to the official government of Catalonia, Catalan is the second most spoken language of the region, after Spanish (over 35% of Catalans use exclusively Catalan as their first language, while 11% of Catalans use equally both Catalan and Spanish). It is the most spoken language in many comarques of Catalonia, with the exception of the Barcelona metropolitan area (Barcelonès plus surrounding comarques) and Camp de Tarragona. Catalan is a compulsory subject in schools and enjoys equals rights with Spanish throughout Catalonia.
Roman Catholicism, which has a long history in Spain, remains the dominant religion. Although it no longer has official status by law, in all public schools in Spain students have to choose either a religion or ethics class. Catholicism is the religion most commonly taught, although the teaching of Islam, Judaism, and evangelical Christianity is also recognised in law. According to a June 2016 study by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research about 70% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholics, 2% other faith, and about 25% identify with no religion. Most Spaniards do not participate regularly in religious services. This same study shows that of the Spaniards who identify themselves as religious, 59% hardly ever or never go to church, 16% go to church some times a year, 9% some time per month and 15% every Sunday or multiple times per week. Recent polls and surveys have revealed that atheists and agnostics comprise anywhere from 20% to 27% of the Spanish population.
Known as "Rioplatense Spanish", Buenos Aires' Spanish (as that of other cities like Rosario and Montevideo, Uruguay) is characterised by "voseo", "yeísmo" and aspiration of "s" in various contexts. It is heavily influenced by the dialects of Spanish spoken in Andalusia and Murcia.
In Spanish, the term "hispano" as in "hispanoamericano", refers to the people of Spanish origin who live in the Americas; it also refers to a relationship to Hispania or to the Spanish language. There are people in Hispanic America that are not of Spanish origin, as the original people of these areas are Amerindians.
, 400 million people spoke English as their first language, and 1.1 billion spoke it as a secondary language. English is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin and Spanish. However, when combining native and non-native speakers it may, depending on the estimate used, be the most commonly spoken language in the world. English is spoken by communities on every continent and on oceanic islands in all the major oceans.
According to some, derived from the fact that almost all Spaniards are Catholic, and Spain remains to this day one of the most homogeneous Western countries, Spanish Judeophobia reflects a national obsession with religious and ethnic unity which is based on the conception of an imaginary "internal enemy" plotting the downfall of the Catholic religion and the traditional social order. However, this assumption clashes with the fact that 21st-century Spain is one of the most secularized countries in Europe, with only 3% of Spaniards considering religion as one of their three most important values and thus not linking it to their national or personal identity. Furthermore, in modern Spain there is not an "internal enemy" scare but in far-right circles, which are more often focused against Muslim immigration as well as Catalan and Basque separatism, way more visible phenomena. Modern antisemitic-like attitudes in Spain are actually related to the perceived abusive policies of the State of Israel against Palestinians and in the international scene rather than to any kind of religious or identity obsession, and it has been defined by Jewish authors as an "antisemitism without antisemites."
Technically speaking, persons from Portugal or of Portuguese extraction are referred to as Lusitanians. In Portugal, Hispanic refers to something related to ancient Hispania, Spain or the Spanish language and culture, Portugal. Portugal and Spain do not have exactly the same definition for the term Hispanic, but they do share the etymology for the word (pt: "hispânico", es: "hispánico").
The Royal Spanish Academy (Spanish: Real Academia Española, RAE), the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language defines the terms "Hispano" and "Hispánico" (which in Spain have slightly different meanings) as:
While everyone in Spain can speak Spanish, other languages figure prominently in many areas: Basque in the Basque Country and Navarre; Catalan in Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia (where it is usually referred to as Valencian), and Galician in Galicia. Spanish is official throughout the country; the rest of these have co-official status in their respective communities and all are major enough that there are numerous daily newspapers in these languages and, especially in Catalan, a significant book publishing industry. Many citizens in these territories consider their own language as their primary language and Spanish as secondary; these languages cover broad enough regions to have multiple distinct dialects. Spanish itself also has distinct dialects around the country, with the Andalusian dialect being closer to the Spanish of the Americas, which it heavily influenced.
Guatemalan Spanish () is the national variant of Spanish spoken in the Central American country of Guatemala. About 13.7 million of the 16 million population speak Spanish. It includes the use of the second-person singular personal pronoun "vos" alongside the standard Spanish second-person singular pronouns "tú" and "usted" to form a three-level system of second-person singular address.A number of words widely used in Guatemala which have Mayan or other native origins, in particular names for flora, fauna and toponyms. Some of these words are used in most, or all, Spanish-speaking countries, like "chocolate" and "aguacate" ("avocado"), and some are only used in Mexico and most Central American countries, like Guatemala and El Salvador. The latter include "guajolote" "turkey" < Nahuatl "huaxōlōtl" (although "chompipe" is also used; "pavo" is also used, as in other Spanish-speaking countries); "papalote" "kite" < Nahuatl "pāpālōtl" "butterfly"; and "jitomate" "tomato" < Nahuatl "xītomatl" . For a more complete list see List of Spanish words of Nahuatl origin. Local words include There are also many words unique to Central America, for example, "chunche" or "chochadas" or "babosadas" means "thing" or "stuff" in some places. The words used to describe children (or kids) vary among the countries in Central America; in Guatemala they are often called "patojos". Cipotes is also used in Guatemala in the eastern departments. In the western and northern departments of Guatemala "chamacos" is used to say children or kids. In Guatemala and Honduras the word "güiros" is also used. In Guatemala (also in Honduras and El Salvador) people with money are said to have "pisto", a term originally used by Maya peoples in Guatemala.
Another motivator for the unification of Spanish is the translation by multinational companies of manuals, software, websites, etc., from English to Spanish. It is easier to use a neutral version of Spanish than to create different versions for each country or region. If it were done by country, there would be over twenty versions, and if by region it would be difficult to define which countries belonged to which region, as well as being complicated from the logistical point of view. The result has been to identify a neutral Spanish, a version that tries to avoid regional phenomena, such as the Spanish-speaking American voseo, or terms that may be identified with specific countries (for example, for “computer”, the term in Spanish-speaking America is ', except in a few areas that prefer ', while in Spain the most frequent term is '; as a result, Microsoft Windows uses the region-neutral term '). This neutral language is developed with the help of glossaries that prescribe the preferred terms and the terms to avoid. It is a common occurrence in the computing field, because it lowers production costs.
Mexicans are linguistically diverse, with many speaking European languages as well as various Indigenous Mexican Languages. Spanish is spoken by approximately 92.17% of Mexicans as their first language making them the largest Spanish speaking group in the world followed by Colombia (45,273,925), Spain (41,063,259) and Argentina (40,134,425). Although the great majority speak Spanish "de facto" the second most populous language among Mexicans is English due to the regional proximity of the United States which calls for a bilingual relationship in order to conduct business and trade as well as the migration of Mexicans into that country who adopt it as a second language.