Spanish language in the United States

United States Spanish
US Spanish
Español estadounidense
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol estaðowniˈðense]
Native to	United States
Speakers	42 million (2022)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Romance Western Ibero-Romance West Iberian Castillian Spanish United States Spanish
Early forms	Old Latin Classical Latin Vulgar Latin Old Spanish Early Modern Spanish
Writing system	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Official status
Regulated by	North American Academy of the Spanish Language
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa[2]
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	es-US
Percentage of the U.S. population aged 5 and over who speak the Spanish language at home in 2019, by states.
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Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States. Over 42 million people aged five or older speak Spanish at home.^[1] Spanish is also the most learned language other than English,^[3] with about 8 million students. Estimates count up to 57 million native speakers, heritage language speakers, and second-language speakers.^[4][5][6] There is an Academy of the Spanish Language located in the United States as well.^[7]

In the United States there are more speakers of Spanish than speakers of French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hawaiian, the various varieties of Chinese, the Indo-Aryan languages, and the Native American languages combined. According to the 2022 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, Spanish is spoken at home by 42 million people aged five or older, more than twice as many as in 1990.^[1]

Spanish has been spoken in what is now the United States since the 15th century, with the arrival of Spanish colonization in North America. Colonizers settled in areas that would later become Florida, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California as well as in what is now the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The Spanish explorers explored areas of 42 of the future US states leaving behind a varying range of Hispanic legacy in North America. Western regions of the Louisiana Territory were also under Spanish rule between 1763 and 1800, after the French and Indian War, which further extended Spanish influences throughout what is now the United States.

After the incorporation of those areas into the United States in the first half of the 19th century, Spanish was later reinforced in the country by the acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898. Waves of immigration from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Latin America have strengthened the prominence of Spanish in the country. Today, Hispanics are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, which has increased the use and importance of Spanish in the United States. However, there is a marked decline in the use of Spanish among Hispanics in America, declining from 78% in 2006 to 73% in 2015, with the trend accelerating as Hispanics undergo language shift to English.^[8]