ScriptLookup

Spanish

español
es 485M speakers

Spanish (español) is a Indo-European language with approximately 485M speakers speakers. It is written using the Latin script. Its BCP 47 language code is es.

Spanish (español) is a Romance language that descended from Vulgar Latin and is the world's second most spoken language by native speakers. It is the official language of 20 countries, primarily in Latin America, Spain, and Equatorial Guinea, making it the language with the most official countries after English.

Spanish is written with the Latin alphabet, augmented with the letter ñ and optional accent marks to indicate stress. Its grammar features grammatical gender, verb conjugation for person and tense, and a distinction between formal and informal second-person pronouns.

Writing Systems Used for Spanish

Latin
Primary
Hello World
LTR Latn

Frequently Asked Questions

What alphabet or script does Spanish use?
Spanish is written using the Latin script (ISO 15924 code: Latn). Latin is written left-to-right.
What direction is Spanish written?
Spanish is written Left-to-right. Text runs from left to right, the same direction as most European languages.
How many people speak Spanish?
Spanish has approximately 485M speakers speakers worldwide. It is a member of the Indo-European language family.
What language family does Spanish belong to?
Spanish belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is written with the Latin script.
What is the language code for Spanish?
The BCP 47 language code for Spanish is "es". This code is used in software, web standards (the HTML lang attribute), and internationalization contexts.

Language Facts

BCP 47 Code
es
ISO 639-3
spa
Status
living
Speakers
485M speakers
Language Family
Indo-European
Scripts
1
Primary Script
Latin

Other Latin Languages

Acehnese Acoli Adangme Afar Afrikaans Aghem Akan Akoose Alabama Albanian Aleut Anii Ao Naga Aragonese Araona Arapaho Arawak Aromanian Arpitan Asturian

Data sourced from Unicode CLDR and ISO 639-3. Last updated April 20, 2026.