Name	Spanish, Castilian
Nativename
Pronunciation	,
Region	(see below)
Speakers	400 million
Date	NA
Ref
Speakers2	500 million as first or second language.
Familycolor	Indo-European
Fam2	Italic
Fam3	Romance
Fam4	Western Romance
Fam5	Gallo-Iberian
Fam6	Ibero-Romance
Fam7	West Iberian
Script	Latin (Spanish alphabet)
Nation
Agency	Association of Spanish Language Academies( and 21 other national Spanish language academies)
Iso1	es
Iso2	spa
Iso3	spa
Lingua	51-AAA-b
Map	Map-Hispanophone World.png
Mapcaption
Notice	IPA}}

Spanish () is a Romance language named for its origins as the native tongue of a large proportion of the inhabitants of Spain. It is also named Castilian ( ) after the Spanish region of Castile where it originated. Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese.

In 1999 there were, according to ''Ethnologue'', 358 million people speaking Spanish as a native language and a total of 417 million speakers worldwide. Currently these figures are up to 400 and 500 million people respectively. Mexico contains the largest population of Spanish speakers. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and is used as an official language by the European Union and Mercosur.

Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of spoken Latin in central-northern Iberia around the ninth century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile (present northern Spain) into central and southern Iberia during the later Middle Ages. Early in its history, the Spanish vocabulary was enriched by its contact with Basque and Arabic, and the language continues to adopt foreign words from a variety of other languages, as well as developing new words. Spanish was taken most notably to the Americas as well as to Africa and Asia-Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, where it became the most important language for government and trade.

Due to its increasing presence in the demographics and popular culture of the United States, particularly in the fast-growing states of the Sun Belt, Spanish is the most popular second language learned by native speakers of American English. The increasing political stability and economies of many larger Hispanophone nations, the language's immense geographic extent in Latin America and Europe for tourism, and the growing popularity of warmer, more affordable, and culturally vibrant retirement destinations found in the Hispanic world have contributed significantly to the growth of learning Spanish as a foreign language across the globe.

Spanish is the third most commonly used language on the Internet after English and Mandarin. It is also the second most studied language and second language in international communication, after English, in the world.

Names of the language

In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called '''' (Castilian) as well as '''' (Spanish), that is, the language of the region of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, and Catalan. Speakers of these regional languages prefer the term ''castellano'', as they consider their own languages equally "Spanish". The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term to define the official language of the whole Spanish State, in contrast to (lit. ''the rest of the Spanish languages''). Article III reads as follows:

Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (...) The rest of the Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities...}} The Spanish Royal Academy, on the other hand, currently uses the term ''español'' in its publications but from 1713 to 1923 called the language ''castellano''.

Two etymologies for ''español'' have been suggested. The Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word ''espaignol'', and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word ''Hispaniolus'', 'from—or pertaining to—Hispania'. Other authorities attribute it to a supposed medieval Latin *''hispaniōne'', with the same meaning. The ''Diccionario panhispánico de dudas'' (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term ''español'' in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms, ''español'' and ''castellano'', are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.

The name ''castellano'' is preferred in all of Spanish-speaking South America except Colombia. The term '''' is more commonly used to refer to the language as a whole when relating to a global context.

History

Spanish emerged from its ancestral Vulgar Latin (common Latin) dialects in the ninth century. Latin had been brought to Iberia by the Romans during the Second Punic War around 210 BC, absorbing influences from the native Iberian languages such as Celtiberian, Basque and other paleohispanic languages. Later, it gained other external influences, most notably from the Arabic of the later Al-Andalus period.

Local versions of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish in the central-north of Iberia, in an area defined by the then remote crossroad strips of Álava, Cantabria, Burgos, Soria and La Rioja, within the Kingdom of Castile (see ''Glosas Emilianenses''). In this formative stage, Spanish (Castilian) developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect progressively spread south with the advance of the , and so gathered a sizable lexical influence from Al-Andalus Arabic, especially in the later Medieval period.

The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin }} > Spanish ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short and —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table:

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |- !Latin||Spanish||Ladino||Aragonese||Asturian||Galician||Portuguese||Catalan||Occitan||French||Italian||Romanian|||English |- |||''piedra''||''piedra'' (or ''pyedra'')||''piedra''||''piedra''||''pedra''||''pedra''||''pedra''||''pedra''/''pèira||''pierre''||''pietra''||''piatrǎ''||'stone' |- |||''muere''||''muere''||''muere''||''muerre''||''morre''||''morre''||''mor''||''morís''||''meurt''||''muore''||''moare''||'dies (v.)' |- |||''muerte''||''muerte''||''muerte''||''muerte''||''morte''||''morte''||''mort''||''mòrt''||''mort''||''morte''||''moarte''||'death' |- |||''tierra''||''tierra'' (or ''tyerra'')||''tierra''||''tierra''||''terra''||''terra''||''terra''||''tèrra''||''terre''||''terra''||''ţară''||'land' |}

Spanish is marked by the palatalization of the Latin double consonants and (thus Latin }} > Spanish , and Latin }} > Spanish ).

The consonant written ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩ in Latin and pronounced in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with the consonant written ⟨b⟩ (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩.

Peculiar to Spanish (as well as to the neighboring Gascon dialect of Occitan, and sometimes attributed to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial into ''h-'' whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The ''h-'', still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words.

Compare the examples in the following table:

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |- !Latin||Spanish||Ladino||Aragonese||Asturian||Galician||Portuguese||Catalan||Occitan||French||Italian||Romanian||English |- |||''hijo''||''fijo''||''fillo''||''fíu''||''fillo''||''filho''||''fill''||''filh/hilh''||''fils''||''figlio''||''fiu''||'son' |- |||''hacer''||''fazer''||''fer''||''facer''||''facer''||''fazer''||''fer''||''far/faire/har'' (or ''hèr'')||''faire''||''fare''||''face''||'to do' |- |||''hierro/fierro''||''fierro''||''fierro''||''fierro''||''ferro''||''ferro''||''ferro''||''fèrre/hèr''||''fer''||''ferro''||''fier''||'iron' |- |||''fuego''||''fuego''||''fuego''||''fueu''||''fogo''||''fogo''||''foc''||''fuòc/fòc/huèc''||''feu''||''fuoco''||''foc''||'fire' |}

Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table:

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |- !Latin||Spanish||Ladino||Aragonese||Asturian||Galician||Portuguese||Catalan||Occitan||French||Italian||Romanian||English |- |||''llave''||''clave''||''clau''||''llave''||''chave''||''chave||''clau''||''clau''||''clé''||''chiave''||''cheie''||'key' |- |||''llama''||''flama''||''flama''||''llama''||''chama''||''chama''||''flama''||''flama''||''flamme''||''fiamma''||''flacără''||'flame' |- |||''lleno''||''pleno''||''plen''||''llenu''||''cheo''||''cheio''||''ple''||''plen''||''plein''||''pieno''||''plin''||'full' |- |||''ocho''||''ocho''||''güeito''||''ocho/oito''||''oito''||''oito''||''vuit/huit''||''uèch/uòch/uèit''||''huit''||''otto''||''opt''||'eight' |- |||''mucho''''muy''||''muncho''''muy''||''muito''''mui''||''munchu''''mui''||''moito''''moi''||''muito''''mui'' (arch.)||''molt''||—||''moult'' (arch.)||''molto''||''mult''||'much''very' |}

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the '''', which resulted in the distinctive velar pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩). See History of Spanish (Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants) for details.

The , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to the grammar, dated August 18, 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."

From the sixteenth century onwards, the language was taken to America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called ''la lengua de Cervantes'' ("the language of Cervantes").

In the twentieth century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.

Grammar

Spanish is a relatively inflected language, with a two-gender noun system and about fifty conjugated forms per verb, but with inflection of nouns, adjectives, and determiners limited to number and gender. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)

Spanish syntax is considered right-branching, meaning that subordinate or modifying constituents tend to be placed after their head words. The language uses prepositions (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for case), and usually—though not always—places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages. Its sentence structure is generally subject–verb–object, although variations are common. It is a "pro-drop", or "null-subject" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are pragmatically unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "verb-framed" language, meaning that the ''direction'' of motion is expressed in the verb while the ''mode'' of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. ''subir corriendo'' or ''salir volando''; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).

Phonology

Segmental phonology

The Spanish phonemic inventory consists of five vowel phonemes (, , , , ) and 17 to 19 consonant phonemes (the exact number depending on the dialect). The main allophonic variation among vowels is the reduction of the high vowels and to glides— and respectively—when unstressed and adjacent to another vowel. Some instances of the mid vowels and , determined lexically, alternate with the diphthongs and respectively when stressed, in a process that is better described as morphophonemic rather than phonological, as it is not predictable from phonology alone.

The Spanish consonant system is characterized by (1) three nasal phonemes, which in syllable-final position lose their contrast and are subject to assimilation to a following consonant; (2) three voiceless stops and the affricate ; (3) three or four (depending on the dialect) voiceless fricatives; (4) a set of voiced obstruents—, , , and sometimes —which alternate between fricative and plosive allophones depending on the environment; and (5) a phonemic distinction between the "tapped" and "trilled" ''r''-sounds (single ⟨r⟩ and double ⟨rr⟩ in orthography).

In the following table of consonant phonemes, and are marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate that they are preserved only in some dialects. In most dialects they have been merged, respectively, with and , in the mergers called, respectively, ''seseo'' and ''yeísmo''. The phoneme is in parentheses () to indicate that it appears only in loanwords. Each of the voiced obstruent phonemes , , , and appears to the right of a ''pair'' of voiceless phonemes, to indicate that, while the ''voiceless'' phonemes maintain a phonemic contrast between plosive (or affricate) and fricative, the ''voiced'' ones alternate allophonically (i.e. without phonemic contrast) between plosive and fricative pronunciations.

!	! colspan=2	! colspan=2	Alveolar consonant>Alveolar	! colspan=2	! colspan=2
Nasal stop>Nasal
Plosive consonant>Plosive
Fricative consonant>Fricative		*		()
Affricate consonant>Affricate
Trill consonant>Trill
Flap consonant>Tap
Lateral consonant>Lateral

;''V'' and ''B'' The letters ⟨v⟩ and ⟨b⟩ are both normally pronounced identically as or similar, and this is the only correct pronunciation. The Royal Spanish Academy considers the pronunciation for the letter ⟨v⟩ to be incorrect and affected. However, some Spanish speakers maintain the pronunciation of the sound as it is in other western European languages. The sound is used for the letter ⟨v⟩, in the Spanish language, by a few second-language speakers in Spain whose native language is Catalan, in the Balearic Islands, in the Valencian Community, and in southern Catalonia. In the USA it is also common due to the proximity and influence of English phonology, and the is also occasionally used in Mexico. Some parts of Central America also use , which the Royal Academy attributes to the interference of local indigenous languages.

Historically, the pronunciation was uncommon, but considered correct well into the twentieth century.

Prosody

Spanish is classified by its rhythm as a syllable-timed language, meaning that each syllable has approximately the same duration regardless of stress.

Spanish intonation varies significantly according to dialect, but generally conforms to a pattern of falling tone for declarative sentences and wh-questions (who, what, why, etc.), and rising tone for yes/no questions. Subject/verb inversion is not required in questions, and thus the recognition of declarative or interrogative may depend entirely on intonation.

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth last or earlier syllables. The ''tendencies'' of stress assignment are as follows: In words ending in vowels and , stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.

In words ending in all other consonants, the stress more often falls on the last syllable.

Preantepenultimate stress (stress on the syllable that comes three before the last in a word) occurs rarely and only in words like ''guardándoselos'' ('saving them for him/her/them') where clitics follow certain verbal forms.

In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress such as ''sábana'' ('sheet') and ''sabana'' ('savannah'), as well as ''límite'' ('boundary'), ''limite'' ('[that] he/she limits') and ''limité'' ('I limited'), or also ''líquido'' ('liquid'), ''liquido'' ('I sell off') and ''liquidó'' ('he/she sold off').

The spelling system unambiguously reflects where the stress occurs: in the absence of an accent mark, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last letter is ⟨n⟩, ⟨s⟩, or a vowel, in which cases the stress falls on the next-to-last syllable; if and only if the absence of an accent mark would give the wrong stress information, an acute accent mark appears over the stressed syllable.

Geographical distribution

Spanish is the primary language of 20 countries worldwide. It is estimated that the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million, making it the second most widely spoken language in terms of native speakers. Spanish is the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Mandarin and English). Internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Mandarin.

Europe

[[File:Knowledge of Spanish in European Union.svg|thumb|right|200px|Knowledge of Spanish language in European Union in 2006. ]]

In Europe, Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. It is widely spoken in Gibraltar, although English is the official language. It is also commonly spoken in Andorra, although Catalan is the official language. Spanish is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, Spanish is the native language of 1.7% of the population, representing the largest minority after the 4 official languages of the country.

Spanish is the fourth most widely studied second language in Western Europe after English, French, and German. In countries where those languages are natively spoken, chiefly France, the United Kingdom and Germany, Spanish is often the third most popular foreign language. Neighbouring Portugal and France have considerable minorities with a high degree of Spanish competency.

The Americas

Latin America

Most Spanish speakers are in Latin America; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside America. Mexico has the most native speakers of any country. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either ''de facto'' or ''de jure''—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua and Aymara), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní), Ecuador and Peru (co-official with Quechua and, in some regions, Aymara), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish is also the de facto and official language (co-official with English, although only a very small percentage know and use U.S. English) in Puerto Rico.

Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population. Mainly, it is spoken by the descendants of Hispanics who have been in the region since the seventeenth century; however, English is the official language.

Spain colonized Trinidad and Tobago first in 1498, introducing the Spanish language to the Carib people. Also the Cocoa Panyols, laborers from Venezuela, took their culture and language with them; they are accredited with the music of "Parang" ("Parranda") on the island. Because of Trinidad's location on the South American coast, the country is greatly influenced by its Spanish-speaking neighbors. A recent census shows that more than 1,500 inhabitants speak Spanish. In 2004, the government launched the ''Spanish as a First Foreign Language'' (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. Government regulations require Spanish to be taught, beginning in primary school, while thirty percent of public employees are to be linguistically competent within five years.

Spanish is important in Brazil because of its proximity to and increased trade with its Spanish-speaking neighbors, and because of its membership in the Mercosur trading bloc and the Union of South American Nations. In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making Spanish language teaching mandatory in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In many border towns and villages (especially in the Uruguayan-Brazilian and Paraguayan-Brazilian border areas), a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.

United States

According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Latino by origin; 34 million people, 12.2 percent, of the population more than five years old speak Spanish at home. Spanish has a long history in the United States because many south-western states were part of Mexico, and Florida was also a colony of Spain. The language recently has been revitalized in the U.S. by an influx of Hispanic immigrants. Spanish is the most widely taught language in the country after English. Although the United States has no formally designated "official languages," Spanish is formally recognized at the state level in various states in addition to English. In the U.S. state of New Mexico, 40% of the population speaks the language. It also has strong influence in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York City, Tampa, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Chicago, and in the twenty-first century the language has rapidly expanded in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Washington, DC. Spanish is the dominant spoken language in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. With a total of 37 million Spanish speakers, according to US Census Bureau, the U.S. has the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking population. Spanish ranks second, behind English, as the language spoken most widely at home.

Africa

In Africa, Spanish is official in Equatorial Guinea (co-official with French and Portuguese), as well as an official language of the African Union. In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers.

Today, in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, an unknown number of Sahrawis are able to read and write in Spanish, and several thousands have received university education in foreign countries as part of aid packages (mainly in Cuba and Spain). Sahrawi Press Service, the official news service of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic of Western Sahara, has been available in Spanish since 2001, the official site of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is in Spanish and RASD TV, the official television channel of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, broadcasts in Spanish. The Sahara Film Festival, Western Sahara's only film festival, mainly shows Spanish-language films. Spanish is used to document Sahrawi poetry and oral traditions and has also be used in Sahrawi literature. Despite Spanish having been used by the Sahrawi people for over a century due to Western Sahara's history as a former Spanish colony, the Cervantes Institute has denied support and Spanish-language education to Sahrawis in Western Sahara and the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria. A group of Sahrawi poets known as ''Generación de la Amistad saharaui'' produces Sahrawi literature in Spanish.

Spanish is also spoken in the Spanish autonomous cities of Ceuta (75,241) and Melilla (73,460) in continental North Africa, and in the autonomous community of the Canary Islands (2,117,519), a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa. Within Northern Morocco, a former Franco-Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish as a second language. It is spoken by some communities of Angola, because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War, and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned in time for their country's independence.

Asia-Pacific

Spanish was used by the colonial governments and the educated classes in the former Spanish East Indies, namely the Philippines, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. From 1565 to 1973 it was an official language of the Philippines. Up to 1899 it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken as a first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos. In the mid-nineteenth century the colonial government set up a free public school system with Spanish as the medium of instruction. This increased the use of Spanish throughout the islands and led to a class of Spanish-speaking intellectuals called the ''Ilustrados''. Although Spanish never became the language of a majority of the population, Philippine literature and press primarily used Spanish up to the 1940s. It continued as an official language until the change of Constitution in 1973. Following the U.S. occupation and administration of the islands in 1899, the American government increasingly imposed English, especially after the 1920s. The US authorities conducted a campaign of introducing English as the medium of instruction in schools, universities and public spaces, and prohibited the use of Spanish in media and educational institutions.

After the country became independent in 1946, Spanish remained an official language along with English and Tagalog-based Filipino. However, the language lost its official status in 1973 during the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. In 2007 the Arroyo administration announced that it would pass legislation to reintroduce Spanish in the Philippine education system. In 2010 a Memorandum was signed between Spanish and Philippine authorities to cooperate in implementing this decree. Today, Radio Manila broadcasts daily in Spanish. Worthy of mention is the Chavacano, a Spanish-Philippine pidgin, spoken by 600,000 people both in the Philippines and Sabah.

The local languages of the Philippines retain much Spanish influence, with many words being derived from Spanish from Spain and Mexican Spanish, due to the control of the islands by Spain through Mexico City until 1821, and directly from Madrid until 1898.

Among the countries and territories in Oceania, Spanish is also spoken in Easter Island, a territorial possession of Chile. The U.S. Territories of Guam and Northern Marianas, and the independent states of Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia all once had majority Spanish speakers, since the Marianas and the Caroline Islands were Spanish colonial possessions until the late nineteenth century (see Spanish-American War), but Spanish is no longer used by the masses but there are still native and second-language speakers. It also exists as an influence on the local native languages and is spoken by Hispanic American resident populations.

Antarctica

The Antarctic Treaty regulates international relations with respect to Antarctica. Argentina and Chile, both Spanish-speaking countries, claim territories according to this treaty. The Argentine Antarctica sector had a winter population of 169 in 1999, and in the Chilean Antarctic Territory, according to the national census of 2002, the population was 130 (115 male, 15 female).

Spanish speakers by country

The following table shows the number of Spanish speakers in some 70 countries. >

Country	Population	Spanish as a native language speakers	Bilingual and as a second language speakers (in countries where Spanish is official) or as a foreign language (where it is not official)	Spanish speakers as percentage of population	Total number of Spanish speakers
	116,147,000			98.5%
	312,813,000	36,995,602	13,004,398	%	50,000,000
	47,190,493			98.8%
	46,410,000		130,080	99.2%
	41,119,000	36,552,109	4,321,488	99.4%
	29,821,000		753,397	98.8%
	30,135,875		744,942	86.6%
	17,402,630	17,153,127	85,914	99.3%
	14,865,000	12,466,200	2,126,986	98.1%
	15,073,375			86.4%
	11,235,863	11,235,863		99.4%
	10,225,000	10,006,500	177,600	99.6%
	10,426,154			87.9%
	8,215,313	8,007,563	125,597	99.0%
	6,183,002	6,168,902		99.7%
	65,821,885	440,106	5,721,380	9.4%	6,161,486
	5,822,000	5,331,876	315,464	97.0%
	31,759,997	20,000	5,480,000	17.32%	5,500,000
	190,732,694	460,018	5,000,000	2.86%	5,460,018
	4,615,646	4,530,228	48,493	99.2%
	6,337,127	3,612,162	446,145	69.5%
	3,998,000			98.8%
	62,041,708	184,867	3,737,633	6.4%	3,922,500
	3,372,000	3,221,800	113,108	98.9%
	3,508,000	3,006,957	258,991	93.1%
	94,013,200	2,930	3,013,843	3.2%	3,016,773
	81,802,000	178,976	2,527,996	3.3%	2,706,972
	60,605,053	422,249	1,968,320	3.5%	1,635,976
	1,170,308	1,683	1,057,446	90.5%
	34,605,346	909,000	92,853	%	1,001,853
	10,636,888	9,570	727,282	6.9%	737,026
	16,665,900	59,578	622,516	4.1%	682,094
	10,918,405	85,990	515,939	5.5%	601,929
	22,246,862		544,531	2.4%	544,531
	9,045,389	101,472	442,601	6%	544,073
	21,007,310	106,517	374,571	2.3%	481,088
	38,500,696		316,104	0.8%	316,104
	8,205,533		267,177	3.3%	267,177
	20,179,602		235,806	1.2%	235,806
	33,769,669		223,000	0.7%	223,379
	5,484,723		219,003	4%	219,003
	7,112,359	130,000	45,231	2.5%	175,231
	127,288,419	78,952	60,000	0.1%	138,952
	7,581,520	123,000	14,420	1.7%	137,420
	7,262,675		133,910	1.8%	133,910
	301,270	106,795	21,848	42.7%	128,643
	223,652	10,699	114,835	56.1%	125,534
	4,156,119		123,591	3%	123,591
	12,853,259		101,455	0.8%	101,455
	10,722,816		86,742	0.8%	86,742
	5,244,749		85,586	1.6%	85,586
	9,930,915		85,034	0.9%	85,034
	101,484	6,800	68,602	75.3%	75,402
	4,491,543		73,656	1.6%	73,656
	1,317,714	4,100	61,786	5%
	84,484	29,907	25,356	68.7%	58,040
	5,455,407		43,164	0.8%	43,164
	4,644,457	12,573	23,677	0.8%	36,250
	140,702,094	3,320	20,000	0.01%	23,320
	1,339,724,852	3,055	20,000	%	23,055
	4,173,460	21,645		0.5%	21,645
	154,805		19,092	12.3%	19,092
US Virgin Islands	108,612	16,788		15.5%	16,788
	3,565,205		13,943	0.4%	13,943
	27,967	13,857		49.5%	13,857
	73,722,988	1,134	12,346	0.031%	13,480
	792,604			1.4%	11,044
	2,804,322	8,000		0.3%	8,000
	486,006	3,000	4,344	1.5%	7,344
	403,532	6,458		1.6%	6,458
	513,000	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.
Other immigrants in the E.U.
Other Spanish students
Total native speakers in the world + bilingual and as a second language where Spanish is official:			30,578,092	%
Total with Spanish speakers as a foreign language:	78,693,433	%

Dialectal variation

There are important variations—phonological, grammatical, and lexical—in the spoken Spanish of the various regions of Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas.

The variety with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by more than twenty percent of the world's Spanish speakers (107 million of the total 494 million, according to the table above). One of its main features is the reduction or loss of unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.

In Spain, northern dialects are popularly thought of as closer to the standard, although positive attitudes toward southern dialects have increased significantly in the last 50 years. Even so, the speech of Madrid, which has typically southern features such as yeísmo and s-aspiration, is the standard variety for use on radio and television, and is the variety that has most influenced the written standard for Spanish.

Phonology

Three of the main phonological divisions are based respectively on (1) the phoneme ("theta"), (2) the phoneme ("turned ''y''"), and (3) the "debuccalization" (also frequently called "aspiration") of syllable-final . The phoneme (spelled ⟨z⟩, or ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩)—a voiceless dental fricative as in English ''thing''—is maintained in northern and central Spain, but is merged with the sibilant in southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and all of American Spanish. This merger is called ''seseo'' in Spanish. The phoneme (spelled ⟨ll⟩)—a palatal lateral consonant sometimes compared in sound to the ''lli'' of English ''million''—tends to be maintained in less-urbanized areas of northern Spain and in highland areas of South America, but in the speech of most other Spanish-speakers it is merged with ("curly-tail ''j''")—a non-lateral, usually-voiced, usually-fricative, palatal consonant—sometimes compared to English /j/ (''yod'') as in ''yacht'', and spelled ''y'' in Spanish. This merger is called ''yeísmo'' in Spanish. And the debuccalization (pronunciation as , or loss) of syllable-final is associated with southern Spain, the Caribbean, and coastal areas of South America.

Grammar

The main grammatical variations between dialects of Spanish involve differing uses of pronouns: especially those of the second person and, to a lesser extent, the object pronouns of the third person.

Voseo

Virtually all dialects of Spanish make the distinction between a formal and a familiar register in the second-person singular, and thus have two different pronouns meaning "you": ''usted'' in the formal, and either ''tú'' or ''vos'' in the familiar (and each of these three pronouns has its associated verb forms), with the choice of ''tú'' or ''vos'' varying from one dialect to another. The use of ''vos'' (and/or its verb forms) is called ''voseo''. In a few dialects, all three pronouns are used—''usted'', ''tú'', and ''vos''—denoting respectively formality, familiarity, and intimacy.

In ''voseo'', is the subject form , "you say") and the form for the object of a preposition (''Voy con vos'', "I'm going with you"), while the direct and indirect object forms, and the possessives, are the same as those associated with ''tú'': ''Vos sabés que tus amigos te respetan'' ("You know your friends respect you"). Additional examples:

The verb forms of ''voseo'' are the same as those used with ''tú'' except in the present tense (indicative and subjunctive) of ''-ar'' and ''-er'' verbs, and in the present subjunctive of ''-ir'' verbs. The forms for ''vos'' generally can be derived from those of ''vosotros'' (the traditional second-person familiar ''plural'') by deleting the glide where it appears in the ending: ''vosotros pensáis'' > ''vos pensás''; ''vosotros queréis'' > ''vos querés''.

The use of the pronoun ''vos'' with the verb forms of ''tú'' (e.g. ''vos piensas'') is called "pronominal ''voseo''". And conversely, the use of the verb forms of ''vos'' with the pronoun ''tú'' (e.g. ''tú pensás'') is called "verbal ''voseo''".

;Distribution in Spanish America Although is not used in Spain, in large areas of Spanish America it occurs as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular familiar pronoun, although with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, most of Peru and Venezuela, coastal Ecuador and the Pacific coast of Colombia.

(the use of ''tú'') as a cultured form alternates with as a popular or rural form in Bolivia, in the north and south of Peru, in Andean Ecuador, in small zones of the Venezuelan Andes (and most notably in the Venezuelan state of Zulia), and in a large part of Colombia. Some researchers claim that ''voseo'' can be heard in some parts of eastern Cuba, while others assert that it is absent from the island.

exists as the second-person usage with an intermediate degree of formality alongside the more familiar in Chile, in the Venezuelan state of Zulia, on the Pacific coast of Colombia, in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, and in parts of Guatemala.

Areas of generalized include Argentina, Costa Rica, eastern Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian departments of Valle del Cauca and Antioquia.

Ustedes

The second person plural maintains the formal/familiar distinction with ''ustedes'' and ''vosotros'' respectively in most of Spain, but in areas of Andalusia, in the Canary Islands, and in all of Spanish America, both functions are merged in the use of ''ustedes'', regardless of familiarity. In Seville, Cadiz, and other parts of western Andalusia, the familiar form is constructed as ''ustedes vais'', using the traditional second-person plural form of the verb.

Usted

''Usted'' is the usual second-person singular pronoun in a formal context, used to portray respect toward someone who is a generation older or is of higher authority ("you, sir"/"you, ma'am"). It is also used in a ''familiar'' context by many speakers in Colombia and Costa Rica, and in parts of Ecuador and Panama, to the exclusion of ''tú'' or ''vos''. This usage is sometimes called ''ustedeo'' in Spanish.

In Central America, especially in Honduras, ''usted'' is often used as a formal pronoun to portray respect between the members of a romantic couple. ''Usted'' is also used in this way, as well as between parents and children, in the Andean regions of Colombia and Venezuela.

Third-person object pronouns

Most speakers use (and the Real Academia Española prefers) the pronouns ''lo'' and ''la'' for ''direct'' objects (masculine and feminine respectively, regardless of animacy, meaning "him", "her", or "it"), and ''le'' for ''indirect'' objects (regardless of gender or animacy, meaning "to him", "to her", or "to it"). This usage is sometimes called "etymological", as these direct and indirect object pronouns are a continuation, respectively, of the accusative and dative pronouns of Latin, the ancestor language of Spanish.

Deviations from this norm (more common in Spain than in the Americas) are called "leísmo", "loísmo", or "laísmo", according to which respective pronoun—''le'', ''lo'', or ''la''—has expanded beyond the etymological usage (i.e. ''le'' as a direct object, or ''lo'' or ''la'' as an indirect object).

Vocabulary

Some words can be different, even significantly so, in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms, even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish ''mantequilla'', ''aguacate'' and ''albaricoque'' (respectively, 'butter', 'avocado', 'apricot') correspond to ''manteca'', ''palta'', and ''damasco'', respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except ''manteca''), Paraguay, Peru (except ''manteca'' and ''damasco''), and Uruguay. The everyday Spanish words ''coger'' ('to take'), ''pisar'' ('to step on') and ''concha'' ('seashell') are considered extremely rude in parts of Latin America, where the meaning of ''coger'' and ''pisar'' is also 'to have sex' and ''concha'' means 'vulva'. The Puerto Rican word for 'bobby pin' (''pinche'') is an obscenity in Mexico, but in Nicaragua it simply means 'stingy', and in Spain refers to a chef's helper. Other examples include ''taco'', which means 'swearword' (among other meanings) in Spain, 'traffic jam' in Chile and 'heels' (shoe) in Peru but is known to the rest of the world as a Mexican dish. ''Pija'' in many countries of Latin America and Spain itself is an obscene slang word for 'penis', while in Spain the word also signifies 'posh girl' or 'snobby'. ''Coche'', which means 'car' in Spain, central Mexico and Argentina, for the vast majority of Spanish-speakers actually means 'baby-stroller' or 'pushchair', while ''carro'' means 'car' in some Latin American countries and 'cart' in others, as well as in Spain. Papaya is the slang term for 'vagina' in parts of Cuba and Venezuela, where the fruit is instead called ''fruta bomba'' and ''lechosa'', respectively.

Relation to other languages

Spanish is closely related to the other Iberian Romance languages: Asturian, Aragonese, Catalan, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Mirandese and Portuguese.

It should be noted that although Portuguese and Spanish are very closely related, particularly in vocabulary (89% lexically similar according to the Ethnologue of Languages), syntax and grammar, there are also some differences that don't exist between Catalan and Portuguese. Although Spanish and Portuguese are widely considered to be mutually intelligible, it has been noted that while most Portuguese speakers can understand spoken Spanish with little difficulty, Spanish speakers face more difficulty in understanding spoken Portuguese. The written forms are considered to be equally intelligible, however.

Vocabulary comparison

Spanish and Italian share a similar phonological system. At present, the lexical similarity with Italian is estimated at 82%. The lexical similarity with Portuguese is greater at 89%. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or Romanian is lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71%): comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is low at an estimated 45%—the same as English. The common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages allow for a greater amount of interlingual reading comprehension than oral communication would.

! Latin	! Spanish	Galician language>Galician	Portuguese language>Portuguese	Astur-Leonese linguistic group>Astur-Leonese	Aragonese language>Aragonese	Catalan language>Catalan	French language>French	Italian language>Italian	Romanian language>Romanian	English language>English
}}		1	1			(arch. )	2	3		we
}}(lit. "true brother")						(arch. )5				brother
}} (		(also )	( and in some expressions; arch. )	)						nothing
}}									6	cheese

1. Also in early modern Portuguese (e.g. ''[[The Lusiads">Classical Latin Tuesday }} ⁴ song }} }} (arch. ) (arch. ) (arch. ) more }} (arch. ) (arch. ) (or ) (arch. ) left hand }} }} (lit. "no thing born") (also ) ( and in some expressions; arch. ) ) nothing }} ⁶ cheese

1. Also in early modern Portuguese (e.g. ''[[The Lusiads''). 2. Alternatively in French. 3. Also in Southern Italian dialects and languages. 4. Depending on the written norm used (see Reintegracionism). 5. Medieval Catalan (e.g. ''Llibre dels fets''). 6. Note that Romanian ''caș'' (from Latin ) means a type of cheese. The universal term for cheese in Romanian is ''brânză'' (from unknown etymology).

Judaeo-Spanish

Judaeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino), which is essentially medieval Spanish and closer to modern Spanish than any other language, is spoken by many descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century. Therefore, its relationship to Spanish is comparable with that of the Yiddish language to German. Ladino speakers are currently almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece or the Balkans; current speakers mostly live in Israel and Turkey, and the United States, with a few pockets in Latin America. It lacks the Native American vocabulary which was influential during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Spanish, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.

Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly ''olim'' (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.

A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.

Writing system

Spanish is written in the Latin script, with the addition of the character ⟨ñ⟩ (, representing the phoneme , a letter distinct from ⟨n⟩, although typographically composed of an ⟨n⟩ with a tilde) and the digraphs ⟨ch⟩ (, representing the phoneme ) and ⟨ll⟩ (, representing the phoneme ). However, the digraph ⟨rr⟩ (, 'strong r', , 'double r', or simply ), which also represents a distinct phoneme , is not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994 ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ have been treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remain a part of the alphabet. Words with ⟨ch⟩ are now alphabetically sorted between those with ⟨cg⟩ and ⟨ci⟩, instead of following ⟨cz⟩ as they used to. The situation is similar for ⟨ll⟩.

Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 27 letters and 2 digraphs:

:''A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.'' :''Ch, Ll''.

The letters ⟨k⟩ and ⟨w⟩ are used only in words and names coming from foreign languages (''kilo, folklore, whiskey, William'', etc.).

With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as ''México'' (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. Under the orthographic conventions, a typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including ⟨y⟩) or with a vowel followed by ⟨n⟩ or an ⟨s⟩; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.

The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare ('the', masculine singular definite article) with ('he' or 'it'), or ('you', object pronoun), (preposition 'of'), and (reflexive pronoun) with ('tea'), ('give' [formal imperative/third-person present subjunctive]) and ('I know' or imperative 'be').

The interrogative pronouns (, , , , etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (, , , etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. Accent marks are frequently omitted in capital letters (a widespread practice in the days of typewriters and the early days of computers when only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the ''Real Academia Española'' advises against this.

When ⟨u⟩ is written between ⟨g⟩ and a front vowel ⟨e i⟩, it indicates a "hard g" pronunciation. A diaeresis ⟨ü⟩ indicates that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., ''cigüeña'', 'stork', is pronounced ; if it were written *''cigueña'', it would be pronounced *).

Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question and exclamation marks (⟨¿⟩ and ⟨¡⟩, respectively).

Organizations

Royal Spanish Academy

The (Royal Spanish Academy), founded in 1713, together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Because of influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.

Association of Spanish Language Academies

The Association of Spanish Language Academies (''Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española'', or ''ASALE'') is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It comprises the academies of 22 countries, ordered by date of Academy foundation: Spain (1713), Colombia (1871), Ecuador (1874), Mexico (1875), El Salvador (1876), Venezuela (1883), Chile (1885), Peru (1887), Guatemala (1887), Costa Rica (1923), Philippines (1924), Panama (1926), Cuba (1926), Paraguay (1927), Dominican Republic (1927), Bolivia (1927), Nicaragua (1928), Argentina (1931), Uruguay (1943), Honduras (1949), Puerto Rico (1955), and United States (1973).

Instituto Cervantes

The ''Instituto Cervantes'' (Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide non-profit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. This organization has branched out in over 20 different countries with 54 centres devoted to the Spanish and Hispanic American culture and Spanish Language. The ultimate goals of the Institute are to promote the education, the study and the use of Spanish universally as a second language, to support the methods and activities that would help the process of Spanish language education, and to contribute to the advancement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures throughout non-Spanish-speaking countries.

Official use by international organizations

Spanish is recognised as one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, the Latin Union, the Caricom and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

See also

Names given to the Spanish language

Spanish language poets

Spanish profanity

Spanish proverbs

;Spanish language institutions

Association of Spanish Language Academies

Real Academia Española

Instituto Cervantes

Certificate of Use of Language in Spanish

Fundéu BBVA (formerly The Foundation of Urgent Spanish)

;Spanish-speaking world

Countries where Spanish is an official language

Hispanic culture

Hispanophone

Panhispanism

;Romance languages

Differences between Spanish and Portuguese

Romance languages

Latin Union

;Influences on the Spanish language

Arabic influence on the Spanish language

List of Spanish words of Germanic origin

List of Spanish words of Nahuatl origin

List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin

List of Spanish words of Philippine origin

;Dialects and languages influenced by Spanish

Caló

Chavacano

Frespañol

Ladino

Llanito

Palenquero

Papiamento

Philippine languages

Portuñol

Spanglish

Spanish-based creole languages

List of English words of Spanish origin

;Spanish dialects and varieties

European Spanish

*Peninsular Spanish

** Andalusian Spanish

** Castilian Spanish

** Castrapo (Galician Spanish)

** Castúo (Extremaduran Spanish)

** Murcian Spanish

*Insular Spanish

** Canarian Spanish

;Spanish in the Americas

* North American Spanish

* Central American Spanish

* Caribbean Spanish

* South American Spanish

* Spanish in the United States

;Spanish in Africa

* Equatoguinean Spanish

;Spanish in Asia

Spanish in the Philippines

References

260. ^ http://www.onetoonespanish.co.uk/

Bibliography

}}.

External links

Dictionary of the RAE Real Academia Española's official Spanish language dictionary

Spanish – BBC Languages

USA Foreign Service Institute Spanish basic course

Spanish evolution from Latin

Spanish phrasebook on WikiTravel

Hispanosfera/Hispanosphere

Hispanidad (English: Hispanicity)

}}

Category:Spanish language Category:Iberian Romance languages Category:Languages of Spain Category:Languages of Andorra Category:Languages of Argentina Category:Languages of Belize Category:Languages of Bolivia Category:Languages of the Caribbean Category:Languages of Chile Category:Languages of Colombia Category:Languages of Costa Rica Category:Languages of the Dominican Republic Category:Languages of Ecuador Category:Languages of El Salvador Category:Languages of Equatorial Guinea Category:Languages of Guatemala Category:Languages of Honduras Category:Languages of Mexico Category:Languages of Nicaragua Category:Languages of Panama Category:Languages of Paraguay Category:Languages of Peru Category:Languages of the Philippines Category:Languages of the United States Category:Languages of Uruguay Category:Languages of Venezuela Category:Languages of South America Category:Languages of Trinidad and Tobago Category:Subject–verb–object languages

ace:Bahsa Seupanyo kbd:Эспаныбзэ af:Spaans als:Spanische Sprache ang:Spēonisc sprǣc ar:لغة إسبانية an:Idioma castellán arc:ܠܫܢܐ ܐܣܦܢܝܐ frp:Castilyan ast:Castellanu gn:Karaiñe'ẽ ay:Kastilla aru az:İspan dili bn:স্পেনীয় ভাষা zh-min-nan:Se-pan-gâ-gí be:Іспанская мова be-x-old:Гішпанская мова bcl:Tataramon na Espanyol bg:Испански език bar:Schbanisch bo:སེ་པན་སྐད། bs:Španski jezik br:Spagnoleg ca:Castellà cv:Испан чĕлхи ceb:Kinatsila cs:Španělština co:Lingua spagnola cy:Sbaeneg da:Spansk (sprog) de:Spanische Sprache dv:އިސްޕެނިޝް nv:Naakaii bizaad dsb:Špańšćina et:Hispaania keel el:Ισπανική γλώσσα eml:Spagnôl es:Idioma español eo:Hispana lingvo ext:Luenga española eu:Gaztelania ee:Spangbe fa:زبان اسپانیایی hif:Spanish bhasa fo:Spanskt mál fr:Espagnol fy:Spaansk fur:Lenghe spagnole ga:An Spáinnis gv:Spaainish gag:İspan dili gd:Spàinntis gl:Lingua castelá gan:西班牙語 got:𐌷𐌴𐌹𐍃𐍀𐌰𐌽𐍃𐌺𐍃/Heispansks hak:Sî-pân-ngà-ngî xal:Эспанмудин келн ko:스페인어 haw:‘Ōlelo Sepania hy:Իսպաներեն hi:स्पेनिश भाषा hsb:Španišćina hr:Španjolski jezik io:Hispaniana linguo ilo:Pagsasao nga Espaniol id:Bahasa Spanyol ia:Lingua espaniol iu:ᓯᐸᐃᓂᑎᑐᑦ os:Испайнаг æвзаг zu:IsiSpanish is:Spænska it:Lingua spagnola he:ספרדית jv:Basa Spanyol kl:Spanskisut kn:ಸ್ಪ್ಯಾನಿಷ್ ಭಾಷೆ pam:Castila (amanu) krc:Испан тил ka:ესპანური ენა csb:Szpańsczi jãzëk kk:Испан тілі kw:Spaynek rw:Icyesipanyole sw:Kihispania kv:Испан кыв kg:Kispanya ht:Panyòl ku:Zimanê spanî lad:Lingua castilyana lez:Испанрин чӀал ltg:Spanīšu volūda la:Lingua Hispanica lv:Spāņu valoda lb:Spuenesch lt:Ispanų kalba lij:Lengua spagnòlla li:Castiliaans ln:Lispanyoli jbo:sanbau lmo:Lengua spagnöla hu:Spanyol nyelv mk:Шпански јазик mg:Fiteny espaniola ml:സ്പാനിഷ്‌ ഭാഷ mt:Lingwa Spanjola mi:Reo Pāniora mr:स्पॅनिश भाषा xmf:ესპანური ნინა arz:لغه اسبانى mzn:ایسپانیولی ms:Bahasa Sepanyol mwl:Lhéngua castelhana mdf:Испанонь кяль mn:Испани хэл nah:Caxtillāntlahtōlli nl:Spaans nds-nl:Spaans ne:स्पेनी भाषा ja:スペイン語 ce:Ispanhoyn mott no:Spansk nn:Spansk nov:Spanum oc:Espanhòu mhr:Испан йылме uz:Ispan tili pa:ਸਪੈਨਿਸ਼ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ pnb:ہسپانوی pap:Spaño km:ភាសាអេស្ប៉ាញ pms:Lenga spagneula tpi:Tok Spen nds:Spaansche Spraak pl:Język hiszpański pt:Língua castelhana crh:İspan tili ty:Reo Paniora ro:Limba spaniolă rm:Lingua spagnola qu:Kastilla simi rue:Шпанєльскый язык ru:Испанский язык sah:Испаан тыла se:Spánskagiella sm:Gagana spaniolo sa:स्पैनिश भाषा sc:Limba ispagnola sco:Spainyie leid stq:Spoanisk sq:Gjuha spanjolle scn:Lingua spagnola simple:Spanish language ss:Sipanishi sk:Španielčina sl:Španščina szl:Szpańelsko godka sr:Шпански језик sh:Španski jezik fi:Espanjan kieli sv:Spanska tl:Wikang Kastila ta:எசுப்பானியம் roa-tara:Lènga spagnole tt:Испан теле te:స్పానిష్ భాష tet:Lia-español th:ภาษาสเปน tg:Забони испанӣ chr:ᏍᏆᏂ ᎧᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ tr:İspanyolca udm:Испан кыл uk:Іспанська мова ur:ہسپانوی زبان ug:ئىسپان تىلى vec:Łéngoa spagnoła vep:Ispanijan kel' vi:Tiếng Tây Ban Nha vo:Spanyänapük fiu-vro:Hispaania kiil wa:Espagnol (lingaedje) zh-classical:西班牙語 vls:Spoans war:Kinatsila wuu:西班牙语 yi:שפאניש yo:Èdè Spéìn zh-yue:西班牙話 bat-smg:Ėspanu kalba zh:西班牙语

name	Gwyneth Paltrow
birth name	Gwyneth Kate Paltrow
birth date	September 27, 1972
birth place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation	Actress, singer, author
years active	1990–present
spouse
parents	Bruce Paltrow (deceased)Blythe Danner
relatives	Jake Paltrow (brother)Katherine Moennig (cousin)
children	2 }}

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as ''Seven'' (1995) and ''Emma'' (1996) (in which she played the title role). Following the films ''Sliding Doors'' (1998) and ''A Perfect Murder'' (1998), Paltrow garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in ''Shakespeare in Love'' (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2011 for her role as Holly Holliday on the Fox hit TV show ''Glee'' in the episode "The Substitute".

Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (1999), ''Shallow Hal'' (2001), and ''Proof'' (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. In 2008, she appeared in the highest-grossing movie of her career, the superhero film ''Iron Man'' (2008), and then reprised her role as Pepper Potts in its sequel, ''Iron Man 2'' (2010). Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005. She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay. They have two children together, Apple and Moses. She is also the face of American fashion brand Coach, owner of the lifestyle company Goop.com and author of the cookbook ''My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness''.

Early life

Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of actress Blythe Danner and film and producer/director Bruce Paltrow. Her father was Jewish (of Russian Ashkenazi origin), and her mother is a Quaker of Pennsylvania Dutch and more distant white Barbadian ancestry. Paltrow's paternal great-great-grandfather, whose surname was "Paltrowicz," was a rabbi in Nowogród, Poland. Paltrow has a younger brother, Jake Paltrow, and is a half-cousin of actress Katherine Moennig, and a second cousin of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08).

Paltrow was raised in Santa Monica, where she attended Crossroads School, before moving and enrolling in The Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City. Later, she briefly studied art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out to act. She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where at 15 she spent a year as an exchange student and learned to speak Spanish.

Career

1990–1996: Early Career

After spending several summers watching her mother perform at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, Paltrow made her professional stage debut there in 1990. Her film debut followed with ''Shout'' (1991), starring John Travolta, and she was cast by Steven Spielberg in his film ''Hook'' (1991), as the young Wendy Darling. Paltrow then had a minor role in ''Malice'' (1993) followed by a plum supporting role in ''Flesh and Bone'' (1993). In the hit thriller ''Seven'' (1995), she played Brad Pitt's wife. Paltrow's character was the high school sweetheart of Pitt's, even though she is nine years younger than him in real life. Her performance earned her a Satellite Award nomination. In 1996, she played the title character in ''Emma'' to critical acclaim.

1998–2001: Breakthrough

Paltrow had leading roles in several films throughout 1998, including ''Sliding Doors'' and the adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel ''Great Expectations'' with Ethan Hawke, Robert De Niro, Anne Bancroft and Chris Cooper. She also appeared in two thrillers, ''Hush'' opposite Jessica Lange and ''A Perfect Murder'' inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film, ''Dial M for Murder''. Paltrow appeared opposite Michael Douglas as Emily Taylor, based on Grace Kelly's character from the original film, though the film was met with mixed reviews.

In 1998, Paltrow starred in ''Shakespeare in Love'', portraying the fictional lover of William Shakespeare, played by Joseph Fiennes. The film earned more than US$100 million in box office receipts in the United States, and Paltrow gained critical acclaim for her portrayal. ''Entertainment Weekly'' commented, "Best of all is Gwyneth Paltrow, who, at long last, has a movie to star in that's as radiant as she is." The ''New York Times'' summed up her turn as Viola as such: "Gwyneth Paltrow, in her first great, fully realized starring performance, makes a heroine so breathtaking that she seems utterly plausible as the playwright's guiding light." The award-winning ''Shakespeare in Love'' earned Paltrow the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role from the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and the Academy Award for Best Actress, among other honors. Her Pink Ralph Lauren dress worn at the 71st Academy Awards in collecting her Oscar was extremely popular and was credited for bringing pink back into fashion.

In 1999, Paltrow co-starred alongside Jude Law, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett in ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'', which earned $80 million domestically and received positive reviews. She showcased her singing ability in 2000's ''Duets'', which was directed by her father and co-starred singer Huey Lewis. The same year, Paltrow co-starred with Ben Affleck in the romantic drama ''Bounce'' as Abby Janello. In 2001, she played Margot Tenenbaum as part of an ensemble cast in the Wes Anderson film ''The Royal Tenenbaums'' and starred with Jack Black in the comedy ''Shallow Hal'', where she had to wear a specially designed 25-pound fatsuit and heavy make-up.

2002–2008: Career Down

Since the Oscar for ''Shakespeare in Love'', Paltrow's film success has been less noteworthy. She said she was unequipped for the pressure, leading to several bad movie choices, agreeing with peers who believe the win is, in some ways, a curse. During this time, Paltrow rarely appeared in films, having taken a career hiatus to raise her family. In ''The Guardian'', she said she divided her career into movies for love and films for money: ''The Royal Tenenbaums'', ''Proof'', and ''Sylvia'' fell into the former category, while she did ''View from the Top'' and ''Shallow Hal'' for the latter. In 2004, she appeared in the science-fiction film ''Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow'' opposite Jude Law. The same year, she was recognized as an outstanding woman in entertainment by Women in Film Los Angeles with the Crystal Award. In 2005, she appeared in the film ''Proof'' as the depressed daughter of a brilliant, eccentric mathematician. The movie is based on the play of the same name, in which Paltrow also played the same character at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2002. For her performance Paltrow earned her second Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama. In 2006, she had small roles in ''Running With Scissors'' and ''Infamous'', in which she sang Cole Porter's "What Is This Thing Called Love?"

2008-present: Career Comeback

In 2008, she appeared in the superhero film ''Iron Man'' as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's closest friend, budding love interest, and business partner. ''Iron Man'' is Paltrow's highest-grossing film to date, earning more than $585,000,000 worldwide. Paltrow said she was hesitant to appear in a big-budget project but she was won over by Robert Downey Jr., the film's lead, and director Jon Favreau. She recalled a conversation with Downey, saying:

In 2010, Paltrow reprised her role in the sequel to ''Iron Man,'' ''Iron Man 2.'' Later in 2010, she appeared in the musical ''Country Strong'' and recorded the song ''Country Strong'' for the film's soundtrack. The song was released to country radio in August 2010. At the 83rd Academy Awards, Paltrow performed another song from the movie, "Coming Home," which was nominated for Best Original Song. She also appeared in Fox's ''Glee'', as substitute teacher Holly Holliday, who fills in for Matthew Morrison's character when he falls ill. In her first episode, "The Substitute," she sang "Nowadays" from the musical ''Chicago'' with Lea Michele, Cee Lo Green's "Forget You", and a mash-up of "Singin' In the Rain" and Rihanna's "Umbrella" with Morrison and the rest of the cast. She later performed "Forget You" with Cee-Lo Green himself and several puppet characters provided by the Jim Henson Company at the 2011 Grammy Awards. She reprised her role twice more that season, performing "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" by Gary Glitter, an acoustic version of "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac, "Kiss" by Prince, and Adele's "Turning Tables". In 2011, Paltrow appeared in the Steven Soderbergh thriller ''Contagion'', in which she was part of an ensemble cast, including Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and her ''The Talented Mr. Ripley'' co-stars Matt Damon and Jude Law. It was confirmed that Paltrow will star in a spanish film alongside Antonio Banderas to shoot in late 2012.

Other projects

Paltrow is a Save the Children artist ambassador, raising awareness about World Pneumonia Day. She is on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization that works to alleviate poverty in New York City. In February 2009, Paltrow received a Grammy nomination for her reading of the classic bear books of author Bill Martin, Jr.

Paltrow had her singing debut in the 2000 film ''Duets'', in which she performed a cover version of Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'". The song was released as a single. The song went to number one in Australia, while Paltrow's rendition of the Kim Carnes classic "Bette Davis Eyes" reached number three. In the 2006 film ''Infamous'', she sang "What Is This Thing Called Love". On September 27, 2006, Paltrow sang with rapper Jay-Z during his concert at Royal Albert Hall. She sang the chorus for "Song Cry", from the rapper's album ''Blueprint''. In an interview, she said she would be at the concert but not that she would perform. She was quoted as saying "I'm a Jay-Z fan. He's my best friend."

In May 2005, Paltrow became the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume. She appeared in Chicago on August 17, 2007, to sign bottles of the perfume, and on July 8, 2008, she promoted Lauder's Sensuous perfume in New York with the company's three other models. Estée Lauder donates a minimum of $500,000 of sales of items from the 'Pleasures Gwyneth Paltrow' collection to breast cancer research. In 2006, she became the face for Bean Pole International, a Korean fashion brand.

In October 2007, she signed for a PBS television series ''Spain... on the road Again'' with Mario Batali that showcases the food and culture of Spain. In September 2008, she launched a weekly lifestyle newsletter, Goop, encouraging readers to 'nourish the inner aspect'. The website's title is derived from the initials of her first and last names. Each week, the newsletter focuses on an action: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, and See. It has been ridiculed by E-Online, ''Vanity Fair'', ''The Independent'', and the UK's ''Daily Mirror''.

Personal life

At the age of 24, Paltrow was engaged for six months to actor Brad Pitt, whom she dated from December 1994 to June 1997. The engagement was called off, according to Paltrow, because she was not ready for marriage and later felt responsible for hurting Pitt since she was "such a mess" during that time in her life. Paltrow has since said that, as this was her first high-profile relationship with another celebrity, it taught her the need for public discretion about her romantic life; she told ''Biography'' magazine, "I said things about being in a relationship [with Brad Pitt] that felt wrong to me even as I was saying them."

Paltrow had an on-off three-year relationship with actor Ben Affleck from 1997 to late 2000. Soon after their breakup, Paltrow convinced Affleck to work in the film ''Bounce'' with her; during the making of the film, which was shot in mid 1999, the couple started dating again and eventually broke up in October 2000.

In October 2002, Paltrow met Chris Martin of the British rock group Coldplay backstage three weeks after the death of her father, Bruce Paltrow. They married on December 5, 2003 in a ceremony at a hotel in Southern California. On May 14, 2004, the couple had their first child, a girl named Apple Blythe Alison Martin. Paltrow explained the unusual first name on ''Oprah'', saying: "It sounded so sweet and it conjured such a lovely picture for me – you know, apples are so sweet and they're wholesome and it's biblical – and I just thought it sounded so lovely and … clean! And I just thought, 'Perfect!'"

Her second child, a boy named Moses Bruce Anthony Martin, was born on April 8, 2006, in New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital. Her son's first name was explained as the song, titled "Moses", that her husband wrote for her before their wedding. Paltrow has stated that she cut down on work after becoming a mother. She has also said that she suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her second child.

In 2010, she suffered a severe tibial plateau fracture, due to a vitamin D deficiency and osteopenia.

Paltrow discovered in 2011 that her father's family came from a long line of influential East European rabbis, and that inspired her to raise her daughter and son in a Jewish environment.

Filmography

+ Film
Title	Year	Role	Notes
! scope="row"	1991	Rebecca
! scope="row"	1991
''Deadly Relations''	1993	Carol Ann Fagot
! scope="row"	1993	Paula Bell
! scope="row"	1993	Ginny
''Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle''	1994	Paula Hunt
''Higher Learning''	1995	Student	Uncredited
''Jefferson in Paris''	1995	Patsy Jefferson
! scope="row"	1995	Tracy Mills	Nominated—Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress
''Moonlight and Valentino''	1995	Lucy Trager
! scope="row"	1996	Clementine
''''	1996	Julie DeMarco
! scope="row"	1996	Emma Woodhouse	Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
''Out of the Past''	1998	Sarah Orne Jewett	Voice
''Sliding Doors''	1998	Helen Quilley
! scope="row"	1998
! scope="row"	1998	Helen Baring
''''	1998	Emily Bradford Taylor
''Shakespeare in Love''	1998	Viola De Lesseps	Academy Award for Best ActressEmpire Award for Best ActressFlorida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (also for ''Sliding Doors'')Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyKansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActressLas Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best ActressMTV Movie Award for Best Kiss (shared with Joseph Fiennes)Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role – Motion PictureScreen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion PictureNominated—BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading RoleNominated—Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite ActressNominated—Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best ActressNominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Female PerformanceNominated—Online Film Critics Society Award for Best ActressNominated—Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyNominated—Teen Choice Award for Choice ActressNominated—Teen Choice Award for Sexiest Love Scene (shared with Joseph Fiennes)
''''	1999	Marge Sherwood
''''	2000	Herself	Uncredited
''Duets''	2000	Liv
! scope="row"	2000	Abby Janello
''''	2001	Skye Davidson
''''	2001	Margot Tenenbaum	Nominated—Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best CastNominated—Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
''Shallow Hal''	2001	Rosemary Shanahan
''Searching for Debra Winger''	2002	Herself	Documentary
''Austin Powers in Goldmember''	2002	Gwyneth Paltrow as Dixie Normous in 'Austinpussy'
! scope="row"	2002	Maud Bailey
''View from the Top''	2003	Donna Jensen
! scope="row"	2003	Sylvia Plath
''Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow''	2004	Polly Perkins	Nominated—MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss (shared with Jude Law)
! scope="row"	2005	Catherine	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
! scope="row"	2006	Kitty Dean
''Love and Other Disasters''	2006	Hollywood Jacks	Cameo appearance
! scope="row"	2006	Hope Finch
''''	2007	Dora
! scope="row"	2008
! scope="row"	2008	Michelle	Nominated—Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Female
''Iron Man 2''	2010	Virginia "Pepper" Potts	Nominated— ''[[Country Strong">Teen Choice Award
''[[Country Strong''	2010	Kelly Canter
''Glee: The 3D Concert Movie''	2011	Holly Holliday	Cameo
! scope="row"	2011	Beth Emhoff
''Thanks For Sharing''	2012	Phoebe	Independent film
! scope="row"	2012	Virginia "Pepper" Potts
''Iron Man 3''	2013	Virginia "Pepper" Potts

+ Television
Title	Year	Role	Notes
''Saturday Night Live''	1999	Host	Hosted episodes in 1999, 2001, and 2011
''Spain... On The Road Again''	2008	Herself
''''	2010	Herself
! scope="row"	2010–present	Holly Holliday
! scope="row"	2011	Herself	Season 2, episode 7 "Gwyneth Paltrow"

Discography

Singles

Single	Year	Peak chart positions						Album
		! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"
! scope="row"		—	1	—	1	1	—		AUS">Music recording sales certification	Album
! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"
! scope="row"		—	1	—	1	1	—		AUS: 2× Platinum	rowspan="2"
"Bette Davis Eyes"	—	—	—	3	—	—		* AUS: Platinum
! scope="row"	2010	81	—	30	—	—	—		rowspan="2"
"Me and Tennessee" (with Tim McGraw)	2011	—	—	34	—	—	63

Featured singles

Single	Year	Peak chart positions					Album
		! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"	! style="width:35px;"
! scope="row"		11	24	12	20	31	''Glee: The Music, Volume 4''
! scope="row"	—	—	—	—	—
" "[[Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)">Singin' in the Rain (song)	18	23	20	10	22
"[[Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" (with ''Glee'' Cast)		57	—	63	—	95
! scope="row"	83	98	80	—	—
! scope="row"	23	38	35	36	52
"Turning Tables" (with ''Glee'' Cast)	66	—	66	—	75	''Glee: The Music, Volume 6''

Album appearances

Song	Year	Album
"Silent Worship" (with Ewan McGregor)	1996
! scope="row"	2000
"It's Only Love" (with Sheryl Crow)	2002	''C'mon, C'mon''
"What Is This Thing Called Love" (with Mark Rubin Band)	2006
"Shake That Thing"		rowspan="4"
"Coming Home"
"A Fighter"
"Travis"
"Somewhere Over The Rainbow" (with Matthew Morrison)	2011
"This Woman's Work"	2011

Music videos

Video	Year	Director
"Country Strong"	2010	Kristin Barlowe, Christoper Sims
"Me and Tennessee" (with Tim McGraw)	2011	Shana Feste

References

External links

Gwyneth Paltrow's Newsletter, Goop

Category:1972 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:American expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American people of Barbadian descent Category:American musicians of German descent Category:American people of Russian descent Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Best Actress Empire Award winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Musicians from California Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Santa Monica, California Category:University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Category:Pennsylvania Dutch people

af:Gwyneth Paltrow ar:جوينيث بالترو an:Gwyneth Paltrow az:Qvinet Peltrou zh-min-nan:Gwyneth Paltrow be-x-old:Гўінэт Пэлтраў bcl:Gwyneth Paltrow bg:Гуинет Полтроу bs:Gwyneth Paltrow br:Gwyneth Paltrow ca:Gwyneth Paltrow ceb:Gwyneth Paltrow cs:Gwyneth Paltrow cbk-zam:Gwyneth Paltrow co:Gwyneth Paltrow cy:Gwyneth Paltrow da:Gwyneth Paltrow de:Gwyneth Paltrow et:Gwyneth Paltrow el:Γκουίνεθ Πάλτροου es:Gwyneth Paltrow eo:Gwyneth Paltrow eu:Gwyneth Paltrow fa:گوئینت پالترو fr:Gwyneth Paltrow fy:Gwyneth Paltrow ga:Gwyneth Paltrow gv:Gwyneth Paltrow gl:Gwyneth Paltrow ko:기네스 팰트로 hy:Գվինեթ Փելթրոու hi:ग्विनिथ पाल्ट्रो hsb:Gwyneth Paltrow hr:Gwyneth Paltrow io:Gwyneth Paltrow ilo:Gwyneth Paltrow id:Gwyneth Paltrow ia:Gwyneth Paltrow is:Gwyneth Paltrow it:Gwyneth Paltrow he:גווינת' פאלטרו jv:Gwyneth Paltrow pam:Gwyneth Paltrow ka:გვინეთ პელტროუ csb:Gwyneth Paltrow kk:Гвинет Пэлтроу la:Gwyneth Paltrow lv:Gvineta Paltrova lb:Gwyneth Paltrow lt:Gwyneth Paltrow li:Gwyneth Paltrow hu:Gwyneth Paltrow mk:Гвинет Палтроу mr:ग्वेनेथ पॅल्ट्रो ms:Gwyneth Paltrow nah:Gwyneth Paltrow nl:Gwyneth Paltrow ja:グウィネス・パルトロー nap:Gwyneth Paltrow no:Gwyneth Paltrow nn:Gwyneth Paltrow oc:Gwyneth Paltrow uz:Gwyneth Paltrow pms:Gwyneth Paltrow pl:Gwyneth Paltrow pt:Gwyneth Paltrow ro:Gwyneth Paltrow ru:Пэлтроу, Гвинет sq:Gwyneth Paltrow simple:Gwyneth Paltrow sk:Gwyneth Paltrowová sl:Gwyneth Paltrow szl:Gwyneth Paltrow srn:Gwyneth Paltrow sr:Гвинет Палтроу sh:Gwyneth Paltrow fi:Gwyneth Paltrow sv:Gwyneth Paltrow tl:Gwyneth Paltrow th:กวินเน็ธ พัลโทรว์ tg:Гуйнет Палтро tr:Gwyneth Paltrow uk:Гвінет Пелтроу vi:Gwyneth Paltrow wa:Gwyneth Paltrow war:Gwyneth Paltrow yo:Gwyneth Paltrow bat-smg:Gwyneth Paltrow zh:格温妮丝·帕特罗

Name	Rob Gronkowski
Currentteam	New England Patriots
Currentnumber	87
Currentposition	Tight end
Birth date	May 14, 1989
Birth place	Amherst, NY
Heightft	6
Heightin	6
Weight	265
College	Arizona
Draftyear	2010
Draftround	2
Draftpick	42
Debutyear	2010
Debutteam	New England Patriots
Pastteams	New England Patriots (–present)
Status	Active
Highlights	AP third-team All-American (2008) First-team All-Pac-10 (2008) Most TD receptions by a TE, season (17 in 2011) Most receiving yards by a TE, season (1,327 in 2011) Pro Bowl (2011) All-Pro (2011) AFC champion (2011)
Statweek	17
Statseason	2011
Statlabel1	Receptions
Statvalue1	132
Statlabel2	Receiving yards
Statvalue2	1,873
Statlabel3	Average
Statvalue3	14.2
Statlabel4	Receiving touchdowns
Statvalue4	27
Statlabel5	Rushing touchdowns
Statvalue5	1
Nfl	GRO135948 }}

Robert Gronkowski (born May 14, 1989) is an American football tight end for the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). He was selected by the Patriots in the second round of the 2010 NFL Draft. He played college football at the University of Arizona.

Gronkowski owns a number of NFL tight end scoring and receiving records, including the single-season records for tight ends for most receiving touchdowns (17), most total touchdowns (18), and most receiving yards (1,327), all set in 2011. He is also the first tight end in NFL history to lead the league in receiving touchdowns for an entire season.

Early years

Gronkowski, who is often called "Gronk," was born in Amherst, New York to parents Gordon Gronkowski and Diane Gronkowski, who are Christians. His father started for three years as an offensive guard on the Syracuse University football team. His great-grandfather, Ignatius Gronkowski, was a member of the 1924 U.S. Olympic cycling team in Paris. Gronkowski is the second-youngest of five brothers. The eldest, Gordie, Jr., played baseball at Jacksonville University and was on the professional Canadian-American league Worcester Tornadoes' 2011 roster. Chris played football for two years at University of Maryland before transferring to Arizona, and is now the starting fullback for the NFL Indianapolis Colts. Dan played as a tight end at Maryland and was selected in the 2009 NFL Draft. The youngest brother, Glenn, is attending Kansas State University.

Gronkowski was raised in Williamsville, New York close to Buffalo and attended Williamsville North High School for three years. He played football as a tight end and basketball as a center. As a junior, he recorded 36 receptions for 648 yards and seven touchdowns, and 73 tackles and six sacks on defense. He was named an All-Western New York first-team and All-State second-team player.

In 2006, he moved to Pennsylvania, where he attended Woodland Hills High School as a senior. He was initially ruled ineligible by the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League, but that ruling was overturned and Gronkowski recorded eight receptions for 152 yards and four touchdowns at Woodland Hills. He was named a SuperPrep All-American, PrepStar All-American, Associated Press Class 4-A all-state, ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' "Fabulous 22", ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' first-team all-conference, ''The Patriot-News'' (Harrisburg, PA) "Platinum 33", and a ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review'' "Terrific 25" player. He was recruited by Arizona, Clemson, Louisville, Maryland, Ohio State, and Syracuse.

College career

Following high school, Gronkowski attended the University of Arizona. As a true freshman in 2007, Gronkowski recorded 28 receptions for 525 yards and six touchdowns. His 18.8 yards per reception average was the best on the team and his receiving yards were a then school record for a tight end. He was named a ''The Sporting News'' freshman All-American, Rivals.com freshman All-American, ''The Sporting News'' freshman Pac-10, and All-Pac-10 honorable mention player.

Gronkowski missed the first three games of the 2008 season, but later recorded 47 receptions for 672 yards and a team-best ten touchdowns. Five of his touchdowns were scored in his first two games. He was twice named the John Mackey National Tight End of the Week, including for his performance in a failed comeback bid against Oregon, where he caught 12 passes for 143 yards. He set the school tight end records for single-game, single-season, and career receptions, yards, and touchdowns. Gronkowski was named an Associated Press third-team All-American and All-Pac-10 first-team tight end.

Prior to the 2009 season, he was named to the Lombardi Award watchlist for the most outstanding college football lineman or linebacker.

Professional career

2010 NFL Draft

{{nfl predraft | height ft = 6 | height in = 6¼ | weight = 258 | dash = 4.68 | ten split = 1.58 | twenty split = 2.68 | shuttle = 4.47 | cone drill = 7.18 | vertical = 33½ | broad ft = 9 | broad in = 11 | bench = 23 * | wonderlic = | arm span = 34¼ * | hand span = 10¾ * | note = All values from Arizona Pro Day, except * from the NFL Combine

---

Gronkowski did not participate in most combine events due to a back injury. }}

New England Patriots

Gronkowski was drafted by the New England Patriots in the second round (42nd overall) of the 2010 NFL Draft. He signed a four-year contract on July 25, 2010. The deal was worth $4.4 million, with a $1.76 million signing bonus.

2010 season

During the preseason, Gronkowski was one of three NFL players to score four touchdowns, tying Victor Cruz, a rookie wide receiver for the New York Giants and Anthony Dixon, a running back for the San Francisco 49ers. On one of those touchdowns, a 14-yard pass from Tom Brady, Gronkowski dragged St. Louis Rams linebacker James Laurinaitis several yards before diving into the end zone. In the Week 1 game against Cincinnati, Gronkowski caught his first regular season touchdown in the fourth quarter on a one-yard pass from Brady.

In a Week 10 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, Gronkowski caught three touchdown passes from Brady, becoming the first rookie in Patriots history, and the youngest rookie in NFL history to accomplish the feat. (In honor of the feat, ''Madden NFL 12'' has a "Rob Gronkowski Award" for players who have a tight end catch three or more touchdowns in a single game.)

Returning to his home city of Buffalo in Week 16, Gronkowski caught two touchdowns against the Buffalo Bills, giving him nine touchdown catches on the season. He added a touchdown in the season finale, giving him 10 on the season, and making him the first rookie tight end since the NFL-AFL merger to score 10 touchdowns. In 16 games played (11 starts), Gronkowski caught 42 passes for 546 yards. Despite missing his entire 2009 college season following back surgery, Gronkowski did not miss a single game or practice all season.

Gronkowski was nominated three times for Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week, in Weeks 10, 14, and 17, losing in Week 10 to Tim Tebow, and winning in Weeks 14 and 17. Gronkowski also finished fifth in fan balloting at tight end for the 2011 Pro Bowl, and fourth overall among rookies. Gronkowski also received one writer's vote for the Associated Press 2010 All-Pro Team (writers only vote for one tight end).

2011 season

Gronkowski caught his first touchdown of the 2011 season on a 10-yard pass from Tom Brady in the Patriots' Week 1 victory over the Miami Dolphins; Gronkowski's 6 passes accounted for 86 of Brady's franchise record 517 yards. In Week 11, Gronkowski caught two touchdown passes, including a career-long 52-yard catch and run, to equal his 2010 TD total in just ten games; he passed his reception and yardage totals from 2010 in only eight games.

Through Week 11, Gronkowski led all tight ends with 10 touchdowns; his 20 TDs were the most ever for a TE in his first two seasons. His reception and receiving yardage totals both ranked second among TEs (after Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints), and in the top ten among all receivers, though they only ranked second on the Patriots, behind Wes Welker.

Gronkowski broke the NFL record for touchdowns scored in a single season by a tight end when he had the second three-TD game of his career in the Patriots' Week 13 victory against the Indianapolis Colts. After scoring two TDs on receptions from Tom Brady, Gronkowski scored a third touchdown from 2 yards out. Initially declared a forward pass, the pass was later ruled a lateral pass, which is recorded as a rushing attempt; it was the first rushing attempt of Gronkowski's career, and his first rushing touchdown. It was also the first rushing touchdown by a tight end since Bo Scaife did it in 2006, and the first in Patriots history. At game's end, Gronkowski had sole possession of the touchdown scoring record, with 14, and shared the record for ''receiving'' touchdowns, 13, with Antonio Gates and Vernon Davis.

Gronkowski took sole possession of the TE receiving record a week later against the Washington Redskins, in which he caught his 14th and 15th touchdown passes of the season; in total, he had six receptions for a career-high 160 yards. His performance also earned him his first AFC Offensive Player of the Week award, and, for the second week in a row, NFL.com's "Hardest Working Man" award. He ended the season with 1,327 receiving yards, breaking the previous NFL record for a tight end of 1,290 set by Kellen Winslow in 1980. He also finished with 18 total touchdowns, 17 receiving—both NFL records for tight ends. Gronkowski's 18 touchdowns were the second-highest total in the NFL (after Philadelphia's LeSean McCoy, who had 20), and equaled the output of the entire St. Louis Rams team. His 17 receiving touchdowns were the most of any NFL player in 2011, marking the first time in NFL history a tight end had sole possession of the league lead.

Gronkowski was voted the starting tight end for the AFC at the 2012 Pro Bowl. One of eight Patriots players voted to the Pro Bowl, he finished fan voting with 936,886 votes, more than triple the number received by the number two tight end, Gronkowski's teammate Aaron Hernandez, and the third-highest total of any AFC player, behind teammates Tom Brady and Wes Welker. He was also voted the tight end for the AP All-Pro first team, receiving 44½ of the 50 votes (44 voters voted for Gronkowski; 5 voters voted for Jimmy Graham, and one voter split a vote between the two).

2011 post-season

In the Patriots' first playoff game, a 45–10 rout of the Denver Broncos in the Divisional round, Gronkowski tied an NFL post-season record, catching three touchdown passes as part of a 10-catch, 145-yard effort. Gronkowski alone had more catches than the entire Broncos offense, as quarterback Tim Tebow completed just 9 of 26 passes.

For the second playoff game, a 23-20 win over the Baltimore Ravens. Gronkowski had 5 catches for 87 yards, with a long reception of 23 yards. In the second half, Gronkowski suffered a high ankle sprain on a tackle by Ravens safety Bernard Pollard; the status of his ankle was one of the major story lines in the runup to Super Bowl XLVI. The Patriots went on to lose the Super bowl 21-17.

Gronkowski–Hernandez tandem

Gronkowski was one of two tight ends the Patriots drafted in 2010; in the fourth round, the Patriots drafted Florida tight end Aaron Hernandez; at the start of the 2011 season, they were the only tight ends on the Patriots' 53-man roster.

Gronkowski and Hernandez have had unparalleled production at the tight end position; according to NBC Sports, Hernandez and Gronkowski are the first pair of tight ends in NFL history to catch 5 touchdown passes in consecutive seasons with the same team. In 2011 they also set NFL records for yardage, receptions, and touchdowns by tight ends on one team, combining for 169 receptions, 2,237 yards, and 24 touchdowns. The previous records for receptions and yards by tight ends on a single team was set in 1984 by the San Diego Chargers, who had four tight ends combine for 163 receptions and 1,927 yards; the 24 touchdowns eclipsed the record of 18 touchdowns caught by Gronkowski, Hernandez, and Alge Crumpler in 2010.

A poll by ESPN.com's AFC East blog nicknamed the duo "The Boston TE Party."

NFL records

Youngest player with 3 touchdown receptions in a game: 21 years, 214 days (2010, vs. Pittsburgh Steelers)

Youngest player with 3 touchdown receptions in a game, playoffs: 22 years, 275 days (2011 playoffs, vs. Denver Broncos)

Most touchdown receptions by a tight end, season: 17 (2011)

Most touchdowns by a tight end, season: 18 (2011)

First tight end to lead the league in receiving touchdowns (2011)

Most receiving yards by a tight end, season: 1,327 (2011)

References

External links

ESPN bio

New England Patriots bio

Arizona Wildcats bio

NFL Combine Profile

Category:1989 births Category:Living people Category:American Conference Pro Bowl players Category:American football tight ends Category:Arizona Wildcats football players Category:New England Patriots players Category:People from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Category:People from Erie County, New York Category:American people of Polish descent Category:Players of American football from New York Category:Players of American football from Pennsylvania

de:Rob Gronkowski fr:Rob Gronkowski it:Rob Gronkowski fi:Rob Gronkowski