Spanish
Spanish (also known as Castilian) is the most widely spoken of the Romance languages, with an estimated 483 million native speakers in 2019, according to the Instituto Cervantes, and at least 75 million second-language speakers. It is an official language of 20 countries.
The main dialect groups of Spanish are:
- Peninsular Spanish
- Castilian Spanish
- Andalusian Spanish
- Mexican Spanish
- Central American Spanish
- Caribbean Spanish
- Andean Spanish and Pacific Spanish
- Colombian Spanish
- Peruvian Spanish
- Bolivian Spanish
- Chilean Spanish
- Rioplatense Spanish
Historically, and perhaps extremely marginally to this day, there was also Philippine Spanish.
There are a number of other schisms within the Spanish-speaking world that don’t align so neatly with these boundaries:
- Voseo, tuteo, ustedeo
- S-aspiration in Spanish (common in southern Spain, the Caribbean, the Cono Sur, and other parts of coastal South America)
- Yeísmo and lleísmo (and variations in the pronunciation of the <ll> digraph, whether merged or not with <y>)