11 Interesting Facts About Spanish Language

Spanish is the second most-spoken language, second most studied language and third most used language on the internet around the world. Common to so many people, there are a lot of amazing facts about the Spanish language. Here are some interesting facts about this great language:

Spanish language
image: ehotelier.com

1. Second most spoken language!

Spanish second most spoken languageApproximately 450 million people in the world speak Spanish, which makes it the second most spoken language. Chinese takes the first with about one billion people speaking Chinese. English comes third with about 335 million people using the language.
source: fluentu.com, image: citylifemadrid.com

2. Mother of tenses!

There are about 17 tenses in Spanish for all the three moods – Indicative, Subjunctive and Imperative. That’s a lot of tenses we’ll have to get right if we consider learning the language!
source: takelessons.com

3. That’s how you begin a question in Spanish!

In Spanish while beginning a question, an inverted exclamation mark ‘¡’ or an inverted question mark ‘¿’ is used at the very beginning of the sentence. These punctuation marks do not exist in any other language except Spanish.
source: fluentu.com

4. The noun conundrum!

There are various nouns in Spanish that have their spellings in common but on changing the gender they refer to completely different things. For instance el cometa means the comet and la cometa means the kite.
source: takelessons.com

5. Just one word says a lot!

Spanish words

Translation of Spanish into English takes up more words. Spanish has various such words that can’t be translated into English in a single word. Taking the words empalagarse as an example, it means to feel sick because of too much sweetness in the food and at the same time it is figuratively used in romantic situations. The fact that just one word says so much in Spanish is beautiful.
source: takelessons.com, image: tumblr.com

6. Two kinds of love phrases!

Spanish love phrases

The two phrases – ‘Te amo’ and ‘Te quiero’ can be used to depict the feeling of love. The former is typically used between lovers and close family members; the latter, however, is used in a very friendly way and not the romantic way.
source: fluentu.com

7. False cognates

There are lots of words that appear similar in Spanish and English but have completely different meanings so we call them false cognates or false friends. For instance, embarazada is similar to embarrassed in English but it means pregnant in Spanish.
source: takelessons.com

8. Native language in 4 continents!

Spanish speaking countriesSpanish is the official language of 22 regions in four continents, that’s how widely spoken it is. Here are those:                                                                                                   Europe: Spain.                                                                                                                   America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.                                                                                                 Africa: Ceuta, Canary Islands, Melilla, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon (Coco beach area), Western Sahara.                                                                                                                   Oceania: Eastern Island.
source: spanishtomove.com, image: wikimedia.org

9. Now we know what those marks are for!

No, they are not just for decoration. There are two different purposes of using accent marks in Spanish – One to show where the emphasis falls on a particular word when pronounced; second to differentiate between words that spell the same. For example: camino (way, road) and caminó (past tense for caminar-walk). Also, Accent marks are only used above vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú).
source: spanishtomove.com

10. The favorite language of Nobel Prizes!

Spanish in Nobel Prizes

Spanish is a favorite language at the Nobel Prizes and there have been eleven Nobel Prizes for the Spanish literature so far.
source: infogr.am, image: donquijote.org

11. The maximum Spanish speakers are not in Spain!

Spanish language

The maximum Spanish speakers are not in Spain but in Mexico.
source: source: infogr.am