12 Fun Facts About the Spanish language

 Original Facts

1. With 405 million native speakers, Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in the world, after only Mandarin Chinese.  – Source: Wikipedia
2. Spanish is an official language of the UN, the European Union, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international organizations. -Source : Wikipedia
3. Over the last 10 years, the worldwide demand for Spanish Language courses has almost doubled. -Source: U of Illinois, Springfield.
4. Spanish is the most popular foreign language to learn in the U.S., Europe and Canada. -Source: Wikipedia
5. Studies have shown that students with 2 years of studying Spanish or other foreign language score higher on their verbal scores on the ACT/SAT. -Source:  Actfl.org
6. Spanish is one of the world’s most phonetic languages. If you know how a word is spelled, you almost always know how it is pronounced. -Source: One Month Spanish
7. Spanish’s use of use of inverted question marks and exclamation points (¿ and¡) is unique among major languages.  -Source: About.com
8. The official Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (DRAE) contains 88,431 words.
   –Source: DRAE 22nd edition
9. The average native Spanish speaker uses about 7,000 words.  –Source: ABC.es
10. The country with the largest population of Spanish speakers is Mexico with 114 million.  The country with the second largest population is the United States with 50 million (more than Spain).  -Source: Wikipedia
11. After Latin, the language that has had the biggest influence on Spanish is Arabic. Source: About.com.
12. Countries from Central America (except El Salvador) use the term español to refer to Spanish, while most countries from South America use the term castellano.  -Source: Wikipedia.