Hispanic
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Countries where Spanish has official status.

Situation in the United States of America:

States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population. Countries and regions where the Spanish language is spoken without official recognition, or where Spanish-based créole languages (Chamorro, Chavacano, Papiamento, Portuñol, etc) are spoken with or without official recognition, and areas with a strong Hispanic influence.


Hispanic (Castilian Hispano, Portuguese Hispânico, Catalan: Hispà, from Latin Hispānus, adjective from Hispānia, the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula) is a term that historically denoted relation to the ancient Hispania and its peoples. However, when the modern day country of Spain was created in the 15th century, it inherited the term, and thus, since then, 'Hispanic' is also related to Spain, its people and its culture. In this process, Portugal was excluded from the term, despite the fact that the territory that it nowadays covers was also in the former Hispania[1]. Instead of Hispanic, Portugal adopted the word Lusitanic for the same purposes (in reference to the former Roman province of Lusitania, which was a part Hispania; ultimately, pertaining to the Lusitanians, one of the first Indo-European tribes to settle Europe). With the expansion of the Spanish Empire, the peoples from Spain spread all over the world, creating new colonies and giving rise to the Hispanophone. This expansion was mainly concentrated in the Americas, especially in what is called Hispanic America, which comprises all those countries from the Americas that once belonged to the Spanish Empire and where the Spanish influence is still present.

These countries, inherited the cultural and ancestral legacy of the Spaniards, and in consequence, their peoples and their cultures are also considered as Hispanic. Nowadays, the peoples from Hispanic America who live in the United States have developed their own identity with an Hispanic substrate, and are also considered Hispanic[2]