Spanish as a Heritage/Minority Language

It is estimated that the combined total number of “native” Spanish speakers ¹ around the world is between 437 million (Ethnologue 2016, https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size">www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size) and 472 million people (Instituto Cervantes 2016), making it the second most commonly spoken language in the world. It is spoken by sizeable populations over 20 countries; the top ten countries with the largest numbers of Spanish-speaking inhabitants are displayed in Table 1.1.