Hispanophone

Hispanophone describes anything connected with the Spanish language, and by extension the Spanish-speaking world, also called the Hispanosphere. The word joins the Latin adjective for Spain with the Greek-derived element for a speaker. The region it names is tied to Hispanic culture, the long legacy of the Spanish Empire, and to the shared sense of identity sometimes called Hispanidad. It covers Spain, Hispanic America, Equatorial Guinea and parts of the United States, namely the Southwest and Florida, and in a broader cultural sense the former Spanish East Indies colonies of the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Guam. Estimates for 2022 put native Spanish speakers near 475 million, with about 100 million more as second-language speakers. Sephardic Jews carried Judeo-Spanish, or Ladino, to the Ottoman lands, Morocco and the Balkans after 1492. Because it spans several continents and is defined by language rather than borders, it is a cultural region and not a political unit.