Spanish curiosities you didn’t know

Spain is the 29th most populated country in the world, and the 52nd largest. But Spanish is spoken in Spain and in many other places.

• One of the first Spanish  curiosities is that it is spoken on six continents:
  
  Europe: in Spain.
  America: in all Central and South American countries, except Brazil, although it is already the second language.
  Africa: Spanish is spoken in Ceuta and Melilla, but also in the Canary Islands, Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara.
  Oceania: on Easter Island, in Polynesia.
  Antarctica: although it may seem strange, on this continent Spanish is spoken in the Argentinean town of Fortín Sargento Cabral and in Villa La Estrella, a Chilean town.
• Spanish has 88,000 words in the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy)
   Another curiosity about Spanish is that it is the fastest language to pronounce. The speed of the language is based on the number of syllables that an average speaker can pronounce per second. In this sense, Spanish is the fastest language in the world. It shares the position with Japanese. On the opposite side are German and Mandarin, which are the slowest languages to pronounce.
• The vowels E, A and O, and the consonants L and S are the most commonly used in Spanish. But it is the letter E that leads the ranking with 16.78%, followed by O (11.96%), L (8.69%) and S (7.88%). On the opposite side is the marginalized W with 0.01%.
• Without a doubt, the letter Ñ is one of the most popular Spanish curiosities. The tilde of the "ñ" originally came from another "n" that was written over the larger one at the top, as an abbreviation. Over time it would become flattened until it reached the form we know today. It is known as "virgulilla" and today it is one of the great distinctive elements of Spanish. The most curious thing is that the letter Ñ is not exclusive to Spanish, but can also be found in other languages such as Aragonese, Galician, Basque, Aymara, Mixtec, Zapotec, Breton, Filipino, Guarani or Quechua.
• It is estimated that by the year 2050 the United States will be the most Spanish-speaking country in the world.