The Spanish Sprachraum, known as the Hispanosphere, originated in the Iberian Peninsula but today most Spanish speakers are in Hispanic America; of all countries with a majority of Spanish speakers, only Spain and Equatorial Guinea are outside the Americas. The United States, especially its Southwest region, is also considered to be part of the Hispanosphere. The majority of the country's over 40 million native Spanish speakers resided in the region as of 2016, and nearly 60 million Americans (~20% of the population) profess fluency in the language.[1]
The Portuguese Sprachraum is referred to as the Lusophony (Portuguese: Lusofonia). It is a cultural entity that includes the countries where Portuguese is the official language, and are culturally and linguistically linked to Portugal. The Lusophony spans Portugal, Brazil, Lusophone Africa, East Timor, and Macau. The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Portuguese: Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa, abbreviated to CPLP) is the intergovernmental organisation among nations where Portuguese is an official language.
Even within a single sprachraum, there can be different, but closely related, languages, otherwise known as dialect continua. A classic example is the varieties of Chinese, which can be mutually unintelligible in spoken form, but are typically considered the same language (or, at least, closely related) and have a unified non-phonetic writing system. Arabic has a similar situation, but its writing system (an abjad) reflects the pronunciation and grammar of a common literary language (Modern Standard Arabic).
Joachim Born, Sylvia Dickgießer: Deutschsprachige Minderheiten. Ein Überblick über den Stand der Forschung für 27 Länder. Institut für deutsche Sprache, Mannheim 1989, ISBN3-922641-39-3.
dtv-Atlas Deutsche Sprache. 15., durchgesehene und aktualisierte Auflage. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 2005, ISBN3-423-03025-9.
Alfred Lameli: Strukturen im Sprachraum. Analysen zur arealtypologischen Komplexität der Dialekte in Deutschland. Berlin, Boston 2013, ISBN3-110331-23-3.
Wolfgang Viereck, Karin Viereck, Heinrich Ramisch: dtv-Atlas Englische Sprache. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 2002, ISBN3-423-03239-1, pp. 95–99.