Spanish is the official language in 21 countries in Latin America and Europe. It is spoken by between 322-400 million people natively, making it the second most spoken language in the world. Despite being spoken in areas far from each other, Spanish has a high level of linguistic uniformity due to standardized spelling and rules. The Instituto Cervantes promotes the teaching of Spanish globally. There are over 34 million Spanish speakers in the United States, representing 20% of the population.