More than one billion people around the world speak a Romance language as their first or shared first language. The most wide-spread Romance languages are Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian – i.e. the same four languages that can be studied at Stockholm University. Spanish, French or Portuguese is the official language of more than thirty countries in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Oceania. In addition, many so-called creole languages have developed from French, Portuguese and Spanish in Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.