The Spanish Language is a member of the Romance group in the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European language family, spoken chiefly in the Iberian peninsula and in Latin America by an estimated 330 million people. It is also known as Castilian, after the dialect from which modern Spanish developed. Castilian originated in the Cordillera Cantabrica, in northern Spain.

The Spanish language was carried by Spanish colonists to the Canary Islands, the Antilles, the Philippines, southern North America, the greater part of South America, and the coast of Africa. In the Iberian peninsula the Spanish-language area does not coincide exactly with the political boundaries of Spain. Spain contains three non-Spanish-speaking regions: Galicia, in the north-west, where Gallegan (technically a dialect of Portuguese) is spoken; the Basque provinces, in the north, where Basque, a unique agglutinative language, is spoken; and Catalonia, along the east coast, where Catalan, also a Romance language, is spoken. Catalan is also spoken in the Balearic Islands; in France, in the Pyrénées-Orientales; and in parts of Cuba and Argentina. 

In its grammatical structure Castilian Spanish is generally in conformity with French, Italian, Portuguese, and the other Romance languages

History of the Spanish Language

The Vulgar Latin spoken by Roman armies and settlers in ancient Spain formed the basis of the many Spanish dialects that developed in the various regions of the country during the Middle Ages. The dialect of Castile, or Castilian Spanish, gradually became the accepted standard as Castile gained political dominance in the 13th century.

While the majority of Spanish words derive from Latin, many are taken from other sources; for example, pre-Latin languages such as Greek, Basque, and Celtic. The invasion of the Visigoths early in the 5th century AD introduced a few Germanic words. The Muslim conquest three centuries later brought in a large number of Arabic words, many of which are easily detected by the prefixed Arabic article al. Under the influence, beginning in the 11th century, of French ecclesiastics and pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain, the Spanish vocabulary was appreciably augmented by words and phrases from French. During the 15th and 16th centuries an infusion of elements from the Italian occurred because of Aragonese domination in Italy and the great vogue of Italian poetry in Spain. Relations between Spain and its colonies and possessions have led to the introduction of terms from Native American languages and other sources, and scholarly activities have constantly increased the stock of borrowed words.

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Source: Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

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