File talk:Distribución geográfica del idioma españolpy.png

Controversy

All of these are fairly hard facts to substaniate, and if this map get's adopted, it probably should be vetted, and some changes may occur. Here are controversies I can anticipate (functional/institutional strength):

• Belize: (high/low) One third of the population of Belize speaks spanish as a primary language. No matter it is not official.
• US Virgin Islands: (med/high) has english as a co-official language, but they have only between 15-20% of the population speaking spanish, which is only a slightly greater density than the United States proper: however the US Virgin islands are too small to have marginalization issues effectively making any widespread sceondary language functional.
• Brasil: (med/med) has very few native speakers, probably because immigrants easily naturalize (on the order of 4 million brazileans speak spanish to the exclusion of portuguese). But, in terms of intelligable communication, probably more like 100 million brasilians effectively use spanish, putting it on par with the united states.
• United States: (med/med) despite real usage in the southern border states and Miami, you can go months at a time in major cities in all the states, fully mixing in with the culture, and not hear one word of spanish. For the number of speakers, spanish is greatly ostracized and marjinalized in the United States. Still, there are a few diverse and "plentiful" areas where spanish is a lingua franca.
• Andorra: (med/low) Most people here speak some spanish, but Catalàn is the official language.
• Aruba, Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, and Nederland Antilles: (low/high) all teach spanish in their schools and are in the process of elevating spanish to a co-official language, or else converting wholesale to spanish.
• Philippines: (low/high) also has virtually no native spanish language users, but it is traditionally a popular second langauge that due to cultural contexts can see usage in daily life (making spanish in philippines arguably more useful than it is in the united states today, even though they have a far smaller base). There is a cultural context that makes communicating in spanish much easier than it otherwise would be: and 5-10% of the population speaks a spanish creole as their mother tongue. Additionally, the Philappines were set to reinstate spanish as an official language in January, 2008 and return it as a compulsory language in public schools.
• Equatorial Guinea: (low/high) only 5-10% of the population speaks spanish, but it is the official and de facto language.

-- User:Robbiemuffin Talk, 22:33, June 24, 2008

More than controversy - Errors!!

Hello Robbiemuffin! This map you uploaded has much more than mere controversial points - it has several huge problems and errors! Let's see:

• US Virgin Islans - you may be correct, but can you produce a source for the 15% to 20% of Spanish speakers?
• Brazil - Spanish is pratically not spoken in Brazil! Except for a population of native speakers of 409.564 , plus 95.965 non-native speakers, in a total of 505.529 out of 187 milion (according to Francisco Moreno Fernández and Jaime Otero Roth (2006), Demografía de la lengua española, Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, p.32 - these data came from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estadística. Censo 2000). Please do not confuse Portuguese, spoken pratically universally in Brazil, and Spanish!
• Aruba (according to Ethnologue Spanish is only spoken by less then 10,000 in a population of 103,484; and en:Papiamento is describe byt the Government of Aruba (Languages of Aruba - Government of Aruba (official site) - 2005) as an Afro-Portuguese Creole, not a Spanish one).
• Netherlands Antilles, since Ethnologue does not even list Spanish as a language spoken there and en:Papiamento is describe as an Afro-Portuguese Creole, not a Spanish one; even if the Government does say, in Population and Housing Census 2001, that 6.1% do speak Spanish (10,699 speakers of Spanish out of 183,000), that is hardly a significative number ans is ranked 4th after Papiamento, English and Dutch.
• Philippines - verifiable data for the Philippines give a number of less than 3000 speakers! There is a Cervantes Institute source who is not a primary source (is is not even a secondary source!!), as it just quotes an Italian almanac (Calendario Atlante de Agostini 1997, Novara, Instituto Geográfico de Agostino, 1996, p. 315, that gives, without sources, 3% of the population speaking Spanish). To this the Cervantes Institute adds 689.000 speakers of en:Chavacano (not Spanish proper, but a Spanish creole, spoken mostly in Zamboanga City and in the provinces of Zamboanga del Sur, Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga del Norte, and Basilan. It is also spoken in some areas of Cavite, Davao, and Cotabato), according to data from A. Quilis (La lengua española en cuatro mundos, Madrid, Mapfre, 1992, p. 82), without specifying if in the first estimate these Chavacano speakers were already counted or not (thus raising the total figure to 2.450.000). The Cervantes site does state that these estimate contradict the Census. One should also notice that English is an official language in the Philippines , unlike Spanish (see The Official Website of the Republic of the Philippines). Therefore, I believe that the Philippines should NOT be included in the Hispanosphere in any way, since there are no relevant numbers of Spanish spkeakers there, given that the Cervantes Institute is not, in this specific matter, a reliable source.
• USA - Spanish is indeed spoken by many in the US. HOWEVER, the graphical representation in the map is somewhat biased since it colours the whole of the US in yellow! Even states with about 3% of speakers or less, thus giving the impression of a significate portion of the population being Hispanophone - the question here is one of graphical representation (compare with Image:Spanish USC2000 PHS.svg, done with he 2000 Census data).

This map just provokes confusion and should be deleted. Thank you! The Ogre (talk) 18:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

You should read the description someday. --Keepscases (talk) 14:28, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Fact disputed and POV

This map aims at being an accurate description of the en:Spanish language worldwide, but it is in fact a complete fabrication! Spanish is not Spoken in significante number in Brazil and the Philippines, and no credible source says so! This map should be deleted! The Ogre (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

An accurate map of the Spanish language worldwide should look like the one below. The Ogre (talk) 20:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)