Spanish phrasebook

Spanish (español), also known as Castilian (castellano), is the third most-spoken language in the world (after English and Mandarin Chinese), with around 540 million speakers. Originating in Spain and spoken by most residents there, it is also an official language in Mexico and all of Central America except Belize (though it is widely understood there as well), and of most countries in South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela. Spanish as a second language is generally understood to some level in most of the rest of the continent.

In the Caribbean, Spanish is spoken in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. In the United States, Spanish is a co-official language of New Mexico, and is also a first language for many people especially in California, Texas, New York City, Chicago, South Florida, and most of the American Southwest. There are around 50 million Spanish speakers (including native and second language speakers) in the U.S., making it the country with the second-highest Spanish-speaking population in the world after Mexico. Additionally, Spanish is an official language in the African country of Equatorial Guinea. In Europe, it is a widely spoken unofficial language in Andorra and in the British territory of Gibraltar.

A Western Romance language, Spanish is closely related to and somewhat mutually intelligible with the other Romance languages, such as Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. English and Spanish share variants of approximately one third of their words (via Latin), although the pronunciation and spelling tend to be very different.

Be careful of false friends if you speak Portuguese or Italian. Examples of these include Portuguese embaraçada (embarrassed) vs Spanish embarazada (pregnant), Portuguese oficina (workshop) vs Spanish oficina (office), Italian burro (butter) vs Spanish burro (donkey) and Italian carta (paper) vs Spanish carta (letter).