Equatorial Guinea is the one that got me. Usually, when I see the one(s) I missed, I'm bummed because I should have gotten that. I did not feel that way about Equatorial Guinea.
What about Philippines? I know that Spanish is no longer an official language there, but I think it still has some legal sanctioning and is still at least partially considered the language of educated people. wuld that be enough for including it among Spanish speaking countries?
Then you would be wrong. Though Tagalog, Cebuana, Zamboanga and many other Filipino languages borrow heavily from Spanish, and a lot of Filipinos still have Spanish last names, nobody there speaks fluent Spanish and it has no official or legal standing of any kind The Spanish-American War was a long time ago.
I never met a single person, older or not, who spoke Spanish in the Philippines. And I've spent a lot of time there and know many people. There is an interesting article about the status of the Spanish language in the Philippines on wikipedia. It notes that Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines up until the 1980s when a new constitution declared only English and Filipino official, but confirms mouselinguist's extremely small figures for number of native/fluent speakers.
I am filipino living in the united states, but when I speak any bit of spanish to my friends in the philippines they have no clue what I am saying. It's crazy to me that tagalog is somewhat close, yet they have no clue.
(I’m filipino XD) That would be incorrect because, although it WAS colonized by the Spanish Empire, as a country right now it only really speaks English, Tagalog, Cebuano, etc.
Um. I had no idea about Equatorial Guinea! I just saw where the last blank in my ist was and tried to find a possible country which name started with E or F.
Agree. See my response to another person questioning this statement, i.e. FLUENCY in Spanish for the majority, i.e. more than 50% of the population is questionable.
English is the official language of Belize, but Spanish is taught in public schools and the majority of all people who live there are multilingual. If this quiz were about native speakers and not fluent speakers then Belize would not make the cut.
I really thought Belize was a probable answer as it's a very small population buried in Latin America.
Many Brazilians have a working knowledge of Spanish just because it's so prevalent in terms of trading partners, entertainment, etc. Portuguese is kind of a dead end on the world stage. I mean, I suppose they could always get entertainment out of New Bedford.
It's officially an English speaking country, but is a Spanish speaking country as well under the terms of this quiz. Spanish isn't official, but a large portion of the population speaks it as a first language and most non-native speakers know at least some.
I've been in Belize many times and I can assure you that there is no way so many people speaks spanish...roughly 20% of it does, and I believe it shouldn't be in this category...I mean, even Queen Elizabeth is in their currency! ;)
I also have been to Belize and tend to agree; fewer than 50% of people there speak FLUENTLY. Yes, 50%+ speak some Spanish, but is it fluently and moreover who counts as being from Belize (as opposed to a migrant from another central American country). The citation from Wikipedia is based on now 10+ year old iconographic from a statistical institute of Belize, which makes no mention of fluency just if one spoke spanish, which was probably a simple sampling survey and not any testing:
I trust other encyclopedia sources more, like Britannica and https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Belize
and estimates that roughly 30% speak Spanish. In some districts it is a majority of 60%, but most places in the country it is well below 50%, again FLUENCY if we use the criteria set by the quiz.
Primary sources people. Do not just trust wikipedia at face value.
Yes, it's really easy to forget Spain is in the quiz when it's basically a given. It also doesn't help if you're rusty on your American countries or are trying to remember if there's another American country starting with E when the answer you were looking for was Equatorial Guinea.
I almost missed it too. It's not difficult to miss considering it's 1. a tiny nation and 2. not Spain or Latin America. The only other country that's weird like that is Equatorial Guinea, but I remember learning about that in my high school Spanish class.
Yay, 100% with 57 seconds left on the clock. Following Spanish soccer closely helps in this quiz. I only knew about Equatorial Guinea because of a couple of players, like Javier Balbao, Emilio Nsue and Iván Bolado.
I'm actually really surprised that the United States wasn't on this quiz. I would've thought we'd gotten to that point by now. We have a LOT of spanish speakers! Good quiz though!
The USA has fifty (50) states. Those that have a majority of Spanish speakers are really just six (6): Florida, California, New York, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.
No state has a majority of Spanish speakers. In California, New Mexico, and Texas, roughly 29% of the population speak Spanish. The rest of the states are predominantly English by an even larger margin.
Spanish is the most widely taught language in US schools. Just because people are not Latin@ does not mean they don't speak Spanish. Of course not everyone who has been enrolled in a Spanish class is fluent, of course. I'm 100% Korean, and I speak Spanish and lived in the US nearly 40 years. I started classes when I was 11 years old. Many of my classmates (nor their families) from any of these countries or Puerto Rico (although a lot were). Let's not conflate Spanish speaker with Latin@ (in the US). Afterall I also speak English, and no one would mistake me for English or an Anglo.
I missed Cuba! Argh! Also Equatorial Guinea, but don't feel bad about that--I had no clue it was a Spanish-speaking country at all. But to miss Cuba...
Is this on the countries' official languages, or just by how many people speak Spanish there? Because Andorra's official language is Catalan, which is much like Spanish.
Read the instructions. Every quiz on this site has them, and every quiz seemingly has people asking redundant questions because they can't be bothered to read the very basic and simple bits of information at the beginning.
I feel dumb. I basically put in every south american country EXCEPT Venezuela, and I forgot El Salvador too. Had no idea about Equatorial Guinea, though. I didn't think any African countries still had large amounts of Spanish speakers.
Huh. Good quiz. Didn't even try belize when running through Central and South America -- figured it was English. Tried Trinidad and Tobago several times with different spellings, turns out they speak English, and "Spanish is estimated to be spoken by around 5% of the population". Didn't know that! Dominica is English, too -- I probably should have known that. :P
The reason Belize is on this quiz is because it's not based on first language. If that were the case, more people's first language in Belize is English. Assuming that the maker of this quiz and the maker of the "Countries where more than 50% of the population speaks English as their first language" quizzer correct with their data, that would mean that a lot of people in Belize speak fluent Spanish AND English.
Probably should have read the instructions. Kinda just assumed we were looking for native speakers. Missed Andorra and Belize as a result, although whilst trying random other countries when I had time to spare and space to fill I ended up getting Andorra. Old British Honduras stumped me though.
For Pete's sake, read the instructions! - Besides which, Belize is SURROUNDED surrounded by Spanish-speaking countries, why hasn't it occurred to you that perhaps Spanish may be ONE of the languages the people who live there speak???
Western Sahara is missing. It's recognized by many countries, but not by the UN (actually the UN does not have an official stance other than requiring a referendum)
after typing spain and mexico i just stared at the screen for a minute... averything I could come up with i followed with an immediate nope. And somehow thought the rest of south america spoke portuguese like brasil, not spanish. Once I was on that road things went fast. Only missed dominican republic costa rica and honduras. (might ve gotten those if there was a map)
Isn't it English in Belize? People do learn Spanish because they're surrounded by Spanish speaking countries, but otherwise it's English. Also for Andorra it's Catalan, not Spanish, though many do speak Spanish and/or French as well.
For my second try, I went through my guesses in a more organized way. Trying to follow the map in my mind instead of scattered around. It worked, and I got dominican republic! And it was an alphabet guess on equatorial Guinea, hadn't known.
Yes, thank you, I just checked them out. But still, I don't think anyone before me has pointed out that Andorra's official language is Catalan, and Belize speaks English. Seems like that should have been among the very first comments, right?
I wonder how many people in the Vatican are fluent in Spanish.
And is it just me or is it surprising that so few people speak Spanish in Trinidad and Tobago? It’s so incredibly close to Venezuela yet I believe less than 5% of citizens can speak it
I managed to beat the quiz in 1:33, I was afraid I'd have to go into the Lesser Antilles and I managed to get Equatorial Guinea by a sort of lucky guess, as I remembered Spain had African colonies.
im guessing you mean quite, and Haiti was a french colony for a while and has never really had spanish language spoken widely at all, they speak french and haitian creole
I think this comment thread is justification for a rule that bans people from making comments in future if they make the same comment that has been made and responded to over and over and over and over again. It's funny after the first couple of times but seriously?!
I really enjoyed this quiz. Although I had literally just taken the top ten Spanish speaking countries before it. And still nearly forgot Mexico... really like these country slash language hybrid quizzes. Thank you.
Didn't knew about Equatorial Guinea. I learn something new every day from this page.
Many Brazilians have a working knowledge of Spanish just because it's so prevalent in terms of trading partners, entertainment, etc. Portuguese is kind of a dead end on the world stage. I mean, I suppose they could always get entertainment out of New Bedford.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180218024216/http://sib.org.bz/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Languages-Infographic-773x1024.jpg
I trust other encyclopedia sources more, like Britannica and https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Belize
and estimates that roughly 30% speak Spanish. In some districts it is a majority of 60%, but most places in the country it is well below 50%, again FLUENCY if we use the criteria set by the quiz.
Primary sources people. Do not just trust wikipedia at face value.
Estoy muy enojado con este examen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
surely they are countries that speak Spanish ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belize
Spanish classes lol.
And is it just me or is it surprising that so few people speak Spanish in Trinidad and Tobago? It’s so incredibly close to Venezuela yet I believe less than 5% of citizens can speak it