Spanish is a Romance language and belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. It originated as a dialect of Latin in what is today northern Spain. Spanish is one of the large world languages and is spoken by around 400 million native speakers in Spain and the Americas. Spanish is closely related to Portuguese and Italian. A range of different Indian languages are also spoken in Panama, although less than 10% of the population speak one. Many people in the capital and main towns can, furthermore, speak English to varying degree.