Talk:Hoo's in the Forest? (battybarney2014's version)/@comment-2604:2000:1343:C444:981C:EFFF:87D0:1D90-20190526180535

Spanish or Castilian  is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.

Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, then capital of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Beginning in 1492, the Spanish language was taken to the viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the newly-discovered Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania and the Philippines.

Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin and, through Latin, Ancient Greek. Spanish vocabulary has been in contact with Arabic from an early date, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin. It has also been influenced by Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian, Visigothic, and by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. Additionally, it has absorbed vocabulary from other languages, particularly the Romance languages—French, Italian, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Occitan, and Sardinian—as well as from Quechua, Nahuatl, and other indigenous languages of the Americas.

Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union and many other international organizations.

Despite its large number of speakers, the Spanish language does not feature prominently in scientific writing, with the exception of the humanities.

Estimated number of speakers
It is estimated that more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language, which qualifies it as second on the lists of languages by number of native speakers. Instituto Cervantes claims that there are an estimated 477 million Spanish speakers with native competence and 572 million Spanish speakers as a first or second language—including speakers with limited competence—and more than 21 million students of Spanish as a foreign language.

Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, and 19 countries in the Americas. Speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. It is also an optional language in the Philippines as it was a Spanish colony from 1569 to 1899. In the European Union, Spanish is the mother tongue of 8% of the population, with an additional 7% speaking it as a second language. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States. In 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over, 38 million speak Spanish at home.

According to a 2011 paper by U.S. Census Bureau Demographers Jennifer Ortman and Hyon B. Shin, the number of Spanish speakers is projected to rise through 2020 to anywhere between 39 million and 43 million, depending on the assumption one makes about immigration. Most of these Spanish speakers will be Hispanic, with Ortman and Shin projecting between 37.5 million and 41 million Hispanic Spanish speakers by 2020.

Names of the language


In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español (Spanish) but also castellano (Castilian), the language from the kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan.

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other Spanish languages"). Article III reads as follows:

"El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. ... Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas... Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities..."

The Spanish Royal Academy, on the other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications, but from 1713 to 1923 called the language castellano.

The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Spanish Royal Academy) states that, although the Spanish Royal Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms—español and castellano—are regarded as synonymous and equally valid.

Two etymologies for español have been suggested. The Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, 'from—or pertaining to—Hispania'. Other authorities attribute it to a supposed mediaeval Latin *hispaniōne, with the same meaning.

History


The Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War, beginning in 210 BC. Previously, several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages)—unrelated to Latin, and some of them unrelated even to Indo-European—were spoken in the Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Basque (still spoken today), Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian.

The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages—Mozarabic (Andalusi Romance), Navarro-Aragonese, Leonese, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician, Occitan, and later, French and Italian. Spanish also borrowed a considerable number of words from Arabic, as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the migration of tribes and a period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin in use at that time.

According to the theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos, and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo, where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese, and, according to some authors, was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista, and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus, much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic-derived words, make up around 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language was developed in the cities of Toledo, in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid, from the 1570s.

The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages, including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin > Spanish vida). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short and —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in the following table:

Spanish is marked by the palatalization of the Latin double consonants and  (thus Latin > Spanish año, and Latin  > Spanish anillo).

The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced in Classical Latin had probably "fortified" to a bilabial fricative  in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with the consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v, with some exceptions in Caribbean Spanish.

Peculiar to Spanish (as well as to the neighboring Gascon dialect of Occitan, and attributed to a Basque substratum) was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h-, still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and from neighboring Romance languages, there are many f-/h-doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both Spanish for "deep", but fondo means "bottom" while hondo means "deep"); hacer (Spanish for "to make") is cognate to the root word of satisfacer (Spanish for "to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho (Spanish for "satisfied").

Compare the examples in the following table:

Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table:



In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent a dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants, known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes, which resulted in the distinctive velar pronunciation of the letter $\langlej\rangle$ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental  ("th-sound") for the letter $\langlez\rangle$ (and for $\langlec\rangle$ before $\langlee\rangle$ or $\langlei\rangle$). See History of Spanish (Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants) for details.

The Gramática de la lengua castellana, written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I, she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to the grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire."

From the sixteenth century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes").

In the twentieth century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara, and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City. For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language.

Grammar


Most of the grammatical and typological features of Spanish are shared with the other Romance languages. Spanish is a fusional language. The noun and adjective systems exhibit two genders and two numbers, in addition articles and some pronouns and determiners have a neuter gender in singular. There are about fifty conjugated forms per verb, with 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 aspects for past: perfective, imperfective; 4 moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 3 persons: first, second, third; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 3 verboid forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle. Verbs express T-V distinction by using different persons for formal and informal addresses. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see Spanish verbs and Spanish irregular verbs.)

Spanish syntax is considered right-branching, meaning that subordinate or modifying constituents tend to be placed after their head words. The language uses prepositions (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for case), and usually—though not always—places adjectives after nouns, as do most other Romance languages.

The language is classified as a subject–verb–object language; however, as in most Romance languages, constituent order is highly variable and governed mainly by topicalization and focus rather than by syntax. It is a "pro-drop", or "null-subject" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are pragmatically unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "verb-framed" language, meaning that the direction of motion is expressed in the verb while the mode of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. subir corriendo or salir volando; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).

Subject/verb inversion is not required in questions, and thus the recognition of declarative or interrogative may depend entirely on intonation.

Phonology


The Spanish phonemic system is originally descended from that of Vulgar Latin. Its development exhibits some traits in common with the neighboring dialects—especially Leonese and Aragonese—as well as other traits unique to Castilian. Castilian is unique among its neighbors in the aspiration and eventual loss of the Latin initial sound (e.g. Cast. harina vs. Leon. and Arag. farina). The Latin initial consonant sequences pl-, cl-, and fl- in Spanish typically become ll- (originally pronounced ), while in Aragonese they are preserved, and in Leonese they present a variety of outcomes, including, , and. Where Latin had -li- before a vowel (e.g. filius) or the ending -iculus, -icula (e.g. auricula), Old Spanish produced, that in Modern Spanish became the velar fricative (hijo, oreja, where neighboring languages have the palatal lateral  (e.g. Portuguese filho, orelha; Catalan fill, orella).

Segmental phonology
The Spanish phonemic inventory consists of five vowel phonemes and 17 to 19 consonant phonemes (the exact number depending on the dialect ). The main allophonic variation among vowels is the reduction of the high vowels and  to glides— and  respectively—when unstressed and adjacent to another vowel. Some instances of the mid vowels and, determined lexically, alternate with the diphthongs  and  respectively when stressed, in a process that is better described as morphophonemic rather than phonological, as it is not predictable from phonology alone.

The Spanish consonant system is characterized by (1) three nasal phonemes, and one or two (depending on the dialect) lateral phoneme(s), which in syllable-final position lose their contrast and are subject to assimilation to a following consonant; (2) three voiceless stops and the affricate ; (3) three or four (depending on the dialect) voiceless fricatives; (4) a set of voiced obstruents—,, , and sometimes —which alternate between approximant and plosive allophones depending on the environment; and (5) a phonemic distinction between the "tapped" and "trilled" r-sounds (single $\langler\rangle$ and double $\langlerr\rangle$ in orthography).

In the following table of consonant phonemes, is marked with an asterisk (*) to indicate that it is preserved only in some dialects. In most dialects it has been merged with in the merger called yeísmo. Similarly, is also marked with an asterisk to indicate that most dialects do not distinguish it from  (see seseo), although this is not a true merger but an outcome of different evolution of sibilants in Southern Spain.

The phoneme is in parentheses  to indicate that it appears only in loanwords. Each of the voiced obstruent phonemes, , , and appears to the right of a pair of voiceless phonemes, to indicate that, while the voiceless phonemes maintain a phonemic contrast between plosive (or affricate) and fricative, the voiced ones alternate allophonically (i.e. without phonemic contrast) between plosive and approximant pronunciations.

Prosody
Spanish is classified by its rhythm as a syllable-timed language: each syllable has approximately the same duration regardless of stress.

Spanish intonation varies significantly according to dialect but generally conforms to a pattern of falling tone for declarative sentences and wh-questions (who, what, why, etc.) and rising tone for yes/no questions. There are no syntactic markers to distinguish between questions and statements and thus, the recognition of declarative or interrogative depends entirely on intonation.

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word, with some rare exceptions at the fourth-last or earlier syllables. The tendencies of stress assignment are as follows:
 * In words that end with a vowel, stress most often falls on the penultimate syllable.
 * In words that end with a consonant, stress most often falls on the last syllable, with the following exceptions: The grammatical endings -n (for third-person-plural of verbs) and -s (whether for plural of nouns and adjectives or for second-person-singular of verbs) do not change the location of stress. Thus, regular verbs ending with -n and the great majority of words ending with -s are stressed on the penult. Although a significant number of nouns and adjectives ending with -n are also stressed on the penult (joven, virgen, mitin), the great majority of nouns and adjectives ending with -n are stressed on their last syllable (capitán, almacén, jardín, corazón).
 * Preantepenultimate stress (stress on the fourth-to-last syllable) occurs rarely, only on verbs with clitic pronouns attached (guardándoselos 'saving them for him/her/them/you').

In addition to the many exceptions to these tendencies, there are numerous minimal pairs that contrast solely on stress such as sábana ('sheet') and sabana ('savannah'); límite ('boundary'), limite ('[that] he/she limits') and limité ('I limited'); líquido ('liquid'), liquido ('I sell off') and liquidó ('he/she sold off').

The orthographic system unambiguously reflects where the stress occurs: in the absence of an accent mark, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last letter is $\langlen\rangle$, $\langles\rangle$, or a vowel, in which cases the stress falls on the next-to-last (penultimate) syllable. Exceptions to those rules are indicated by an acute accent mark over the vowel of the stressed syllable. (See Spanish orthography.)

Geographical distribution


Spanish is the primary language of 20 countries worldwide. It is estimated that the combined total number of Spanish speakers is between 470 and 500 million, making it the second most widely spoken language in terms of native speakers.

Spanish is the third most spoken language by total number of speakers (after Mandarin and English). Internet usage statistics for 2007 also show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Mandarin.

Europe


In Europe, Spanish is an official language of Spain, the country after which it is named and from which it originated. It is widely spoken in Gibraltar, and also commonly spoken in Andorra, although Catalan is the official language there.

Spanish is also spoken by small communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. Spanish is an official language of the European Union. In Switzerland, which had a massive influx of Spanish migrants in the 20th century, Spanish is the native language of 2.2% of the population.

Hispanic America
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. Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure—of Argentina, Bolivia (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, and 34 other languages), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní), Peru (co-official with Quechua, Aymara, and "the other indigenous languages" ), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay, and Venezuela. Spanish has no official recognition in the former British colony of Belize; however, per the 2000 census, it is spoken by 43% of the population. Mainly, it is spoken by the descendants of Hispanics who have been in the region since the seventeenth century; however, English is the official language.

Due to their proximity to Spanish-speaking countries, Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil have implemented Spanish language teaching into their education systems. The Trinidad government launched the Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President, making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In September 2016 this law was revoked by Michel Temer after impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken.

United States
According to 2006 census data, 44.3 million people of the U.S. population were Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin; 38.3 million people, 13 percent of the population over five years old speak Spanish at home. The Spanish language has a long history of presence in the United States due to early Spanish and, later, Mexican administration over territories now forming the southwestern states, also Louisiana ruled by Spain from 1762 to 1802, as well as Florida, which was Spanish territory until 1821.

Spanish is by far the most common second language in the US, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included. While English is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico. The language also has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles, Miami, San Antonio, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Phoenix; as well as more recently, Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration.

Africa


In Africa, Spanish is official (along with Portuguese and French) in Equatorial Guinea, as well as an official language of the African Union. In Equatorial Guinea, Spanish is the predominant language when native and non-native speakers (around 500,000 people) are counted, while Fang is the most spoken language by number of native speakers.

Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in North Africa, which include the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the Plazas de soberanía, and the Canary Islands archipelago (population 2,000,000), located some 100 km off the northwest coast of mainland Africa. In northern Morocco, a former Spanish protectorate that is also geographically close to Spain, approximately 20,000 people speak Spanish as a second language, while Arabic is the de jure official language. A small number of Moroccan Jews also speak the Sephardic Spanish dialect Haketia (related to the Ladino dialect spoken in Israel). Spanish is spoken by some small communities in Angola because of the Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned in time for their country's independence.

In Western Sahara, formerly Spanish Sahara, Spanish was officially spoken during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, Spanish in this disputed territory is maintained by populations of Sahrawi nomads numbering about 500,000 people, and is de facto official alongside Arabic in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, although this entity receives limited international recognition.

Asia-Pacific
Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization (1565–1898), it was the language of government, trade and education, and spoken as a first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos. In the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial government set up a free public education system with Spanish as the medium of instruction. This increased use of Spanish throughout the islands led to the formation of a class of Spanish-speaking intellectuals called the Ilustrados. By the time of Philippine independence in 1898, around 70% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, with 10% speaking it as their first and only language and about 60% of the population spoke it as their second or third language.

Despite American administration after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish–American War in 1898, the usage of Spanish continued in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration. Gradually, however, the American government began increasingly promoting the use of English, and it characterized Spanish as a negative influence of the past. Eventually, by the 1920s, English became the primary language of administration and education. But despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines when it became independent in 1946, alongside English and Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog.

Spanish was removed from official status in 1973 under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, but regained its status as an official language two months later under Presidential Decree No. 155, dated 15 March 1973. It remained an official language until 1987, with the ratification of the present constitution, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. In 2010, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo encouraged the reintroduction of Spanish-language teaching in the Philippine education system. But by 2012, the number of secondary schools at which the language was either a compulsory subject or an elective had become very limited. Today, despite government promotions of Spanish, less than 0.5% of the population report being able to speak the language proficiently. Aside from standard Spanish, a Spanish-based creole language—Chavacano—developed in the southern Philippines. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish. Speakers of the Zamboangueño variety of Chavacano were numbered about 360,000 in the 2000 census. The local languages of the Philippines also retain some Spanish influence, with many words being derived from Mexican Spanish, owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, and then directly from Madrid until 1898.

Spanish loan words are present in the local languages of Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia, all of which formerly comprised the Spanish East Indies.

Spanish speakers by country
The following table shows the number of Spanish speakers in some 79 countries.

Dialectal variation


There are important variations (phonological, grammatical, and lexical) in the spoken Spanish of the various regions of Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas.

The variety with the most speakers is Mexican Spanish. It is spoken by more than twenty percent of the world's Spanish speakers (more than 112 million of the total of more than 500 million, according to the table above). One of its main features is the reduction or loss of unstressed vowels, mainly when they are in contact with the sound /s/.

In Spain, northern dialects are popularly thought of as closer to the standard, although positive attitudes toward southern dialects have increased significantly in the last 50 years. Even so, the speech of Madrid, which has typically southern features such as yeísmo and s-aspiration, is the standard variety for use on radio and television. The educated Madrid variety has most influenced the written standard for Spanish.

Phonology
The four main phonological divisions are based respectively on (1) the phoneme Voiceless dental fricative ("theta"), (2) the debuccalization of syllable-final, (3) the sound of the spelled $\langles\rangle$, (4) and the phoneme Palatal lateral approximant ("turned y"),
 * The phoneme (spelled c before e or i and spelled $\langlez\rangle$ elsewhere), a voiceless dental fricative as in English thing, is maintained by a majority of Spain's population, especially in the northern and central parts of the country. In other areas (some parts of southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and the Americas),  doesn't exist and  occurs instead. The maintenance of phonemic contrast is called distinción in Spanish, while the merger is generally called seseo (in reference to the usual realization of the merged phoneme as ) or, occasionally, ceceo (referring to its interdental realization,, in some parts of southern Spain). In most of Hispanic America, the spelled $\langlec\rangle$ before $\langlee\rangle$ or $\langlei\rangle$, and spelled $\langlez\rangle$ is always pronounced as a voiceless dental sibilant.
 * The debuccalization (pronunciation as, or loss) of syllable-final is associated with the southern half of Spain and lowland Americas: Central America (except central Costa Rica and Guatemala), the Caribbean, coastal areas of southern Mexico, and South America except Andean highlands. Debuccalization is frequently called "aspiration" in English, and aspiración in Spanish. When there is no debuccalization, the syllable-final  is pronounced as voiceless "apico-alveolar" sibilant or as a voiceless dental sibilant in the same fashion as in the next paragraph.
 * The sound that corresponds to the letter $\langles\rangle$ is pronounced in northern and central Spain as a voiceless "apico-alveolar" sibilant (also described acoustically as "grave" and articulatorily as "retracted"), with a weak "hushing" sound reminiscent of  fricatives. In Andalusia, Canary Islands and most of Hispanic America (except in the Paisa region of Colombia) it is pronounced as a voiceless dental sibilant, much like the most frequent pronunciation of the /s/ of English. Because /s/ is one of the most frequent phonemes in Spanish, the difference of pronunciation is one of the first to be noted by a Spanish-speaking person to differentiate Spaniards from Spanish-speakers of the Americas.
 * The phoneme spelled $\langlell\rangle$, palatal lateral consonant sometimes compared in sound to the sound of the $\langlelli\rangle$ of English million, tends to be maintained in less-urbanized areas of northern Spain and in highland areas of South America. Meanwhile, in the speech of most other Spanish-speakers, it is merged with  ("curly-tail j"), a non-lateral, usually voiced, usually fricative, palatal consonant, sometimes compared to English  (yod) as in yacht and spelled $\langley\rangle$ in Spanish. As with other forms of allophony across world languages, the small difference of the spelled $\langlell\rangle$ and the spelled $\langley\rangle$ is usually not perceived (the difference is not heard) by people who do not produce them as different phonemes. Such a phonemic merger is called yeísmo in Spanish. In Rioplatense Spanish, the merged phoneme is generally pronounced as a postalveolar fricative, either voiced  (as in English measure or the French $\langlej\rangle$) in the central and western parts of the dialectal region (zheísmo), or voiceless  (as in the French $\langlech\rangle$ or Portuguese $\langlex\rangle$) in and around Buenos Aires and Montevideo (sheísmo).

Morphology
The main morphological variations between dialects of Spanish involve differing uses of pronouns, especially those of the second person and, to a lesser extent, the object pronouns of the third person.

Voseo


Virtually all dialects of Spanish make the distinction between a formal and a familiar register in the second-person singular and thus have two different pronouns meaning "you": usted in the formal and either tú or vos in the familiar (and each of these three pronouns has its associated verb forms), with the choice of tú or vos varying from one dialect to another. The use of vos (and/or its verb forms) is called voseo. In a few dialects, all three pronouns are used, with usted, tú, and vos denoting respectively formality, familiarity, and intimacy.

In voseo, vos is the subject form (vos decís, "you say") and the form for the object of a preposition (voy con vos, "I am going with you"), while the direct and indirect object forms, and the possessives, are the same as those associated with tú: Vos sabés que tus amigos te respetan ("You know your friends respect you").

The verb forms of general voseo are the same as those used with tú except in the present tense (indicative and imperative) verbs. The forms for vos generally can be derived from those of vosotros (the traditional second-person familiar plural) by deleting the glide, or , where it appears in the ending: vosotros pensáis > vos pensás; vosotros volvéis > vos volvés, pensad! (vosotros) > pensá! (vos), volved! (vosotros) > volvé! (vos).

In Chilean voseo on the other hand, almost all verb forms are distinct from their standard tú-forms.

The use of the pronoun vos with the verb forms of tú (vos piensas) is called "pronominal voseo". Conversely, the use of the verb forms of vos with the pronoun tú (tú pensás or tú pensái) is called "verbal voseo".

In Chile, for example, verbal voseo is much more common than the actual use of the pronoun vos, which is usually reserved for highly informal situations.

And in Central American voseo, one can see even further distinction.

Distribution in Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas
Although vos is not used in Spain, it occurs in many Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas as the primary spoken form of the second-person singular familiar pronoun, with wide differences in social consideration. Generally, it can be said that there are zones of exclusive use of tuteo (the use of tú) in the following areas: almost all of Mexico, the West Indies, Panama, most of Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and coastal Ecuador.

Tuteo as a cultured form alternates with voseo as a popular or rural form in Bolivia, in the north and south of Peru, in Andean Ecuador, in small zones of the Venezuelan Andes (and most notably in the Venezuelan state of Zulia), and in a large part of Colombia. Some researchers maintain that voseo can be heard in some parts of eastern Cuba, and others assert that it is absent from the island.

Tuteo exists as the second-person usage with an intermediate degree of formality alongside the more familiar voseo in Chile, in the Venezuelan state of Zulia, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, in the Azuero Peninsula in Panama, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, and in parts of Guatemala.

Areas of generalized voseo include Argentina, Nicaragua, eastern Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Uruguay and the Colombian departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda, Quindio and Valle del Cauca.

Ustedes
Ustedes functions as formal and informal second person plural in over 90% of the Spanish-speaking world, including all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and some regions of Andalusia. In Seville, Huelva, Cadiz, and other parts of western Andalusia, the familiar form is constructed as ustedes vais, using the traditional second-person plural form of the verb. Most of Spain maintains the formal/familiar distinction with ustedes and vosotros respectively.

Usted
Usted is the usual second-person singular pronoun in a formal context, but it is used jointly with the third-person singular voice of the verb. It is used to convey respect toward someone who is a generation older or is of higher authority ("you, sir"/"you, ma'am"). It is also used in a familiar context by many speakers in Colombia and Costa Rica and in parts of Ecuador and Panama, to the exclusion of tú or vos. This usage is sometimes called ustedeo in Spanish.

In Central America, especially in Honduras, usted is often used as a formal pronoun to convey respect between the members of a romantic couple. Usted is also used that way between parents and children in the Andean regions of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

Third-person object pronouns
Most speakers use (and the Real Academia Española prefers) the pronouns lo and la for direct objects (masculine and feminine respectively, regardless of animacy, meaning "him", "her", or "it"), and le for indirect objects (regardless of gender or animacy, meaning "to him", "to her", or "to it"). The usage is sometimes called "etymological", as these direct and indirect object pronouns are a continuation, respectively, of the accusative and dative pronouns of Latin, the ancestor language of Spanish.

Deviations from this norm (more common in Spain than in the Americas) are called "leísmo", "loísmo", or "laísmo", according to which respective pronoun, le, lo, or la, has expanded beyond the etymological usage (le as a direct object, or lo or la as an indirect object).

Vocabulary
Some words can be significantly different in different Hispanophone countries. Most Spanish speakers can recognize other Spanish forms even in places where they are not commonly used, but Spaniards generally do not recognize specifically American usages. For example, Spanish mantequilla, aguacate and albaricoque (respectively, 'butter', 'avocado', 'apricot') correspond to manteca (word used for lard in Peninsular Spanish), palta, and damasco, respectively, in Argentina, Chile (except manteca), Paraguay, Peru (except manteca and damasco), and Uruguay.

Relation to other languages
Spanish is closely related to the other West Iberian Romance languages, including Asturian, Aragonese, Galician, Ladino, Leonese, Mirandese and Portuguese.

It is generally acknowledged that Portuguese and Spanish speakers can communicate in written form, with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. Mutual intelligibility of the written Spanish and Portuguese languages is remarkably high, and the difficulties of the spoken forms are based more on phonology than on grammatical and lexical dissimilarities. Ethnologue gives estimates of the lexical similarity between related languages in terms of precise percentages. For Spanish and Portuguese, that figure is 89%. Italian, on the other hand its phonology similar to Spanish, but has a lower lexical similarity of 82%. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or between Spanish and Romanian is lower still, given lexical similarity ratings of 75% and 71% respectively. And comprehension of Spanish by French speakers who have not studied the language is much lower, at an estimated 45%. In general, thanks to the common features of the writing systems of the Romance languages, interlingual comprehension of the written word is greater than that of oral communication.

The following table compares the forms of some common words in several Romance languages: 1. Also nós outros in early modern Portuguese (e.g. The Lusiads), and nosoutros in Galician.

2. Alternatively nous autres in French.

3. Also noialtri in Southern Italian dialects and languages.

4. Medieval Catalan (e.g. Llibre dels fets).

5. Depending on the written norm used (see Reintegrationism).

6. From Basque esku, "hand" + erdi, "half, incomplete". Notice that this negative meaning also applies for Latin sinistra(m) ("dark, unfortunate").

7. Romanian caș (from Latin ) means a type of cheese. The universal term for cheese in Romanian is brânză (from unknown etymology).

Judaeo-Spanish


Judaeo-Spanish, also known as Ladino, is a variety of Spanish which preserves many features of medieval Spanish and Portuguese and is spoken by descendants of the Sephardi Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. Conversely, in Portugal the vast majority of the Portuguese Jews converted and became 'New Christians'. Therefore, its relationship to Spanish is comparable with that of the Yiddish language to German. Ladino speakers today are almost exclusively Sephardi Jews, with family roots in Turkey, Greece, or the Balkans, and living mostly in Israel, Turkey, and the United States, with a few communities in Hispanic America. Judaeo-Spanish lacks the Native American vocabulary which was acquired by standard Spanish during the Spanish colonial period, and it retains many archaic features which have since been lost in standard Spanish. It contains, however, other vocabulary which is not found in standard Spanish, including vocabulary from Hebrew, French, Greek and Turkish, and other languages spoken where the Sephardim settled.

Judaeo-Spanish is in serious danger of extinction because many native speakers today are elderly as well as elderly olim (immigrants to Israel) who have not transmitted the language to their children or grandchildren. However, it is experiencing a minor revival among Sephardi communities, especially in music. In the case of the Latin American communities, the danger of extinction is also due to the risk of assimilation by modern Castilian.

A related dialect is Haketia, the Judaeo-Spanish of northern Morocco. This too tended to assimilate with modern Spanish, during the Spanish occupation of the region.

Writing system
Spanish is written in the Latin script, with the addition of the character $\langleñ\rangle$ (eñe, representing the phoneme, a letter distinct from $\langlen\rangle$, although typographically composed of an $\langlen\rangle$ with a tilde). Formerly the digraphs $\langlech\rangle$ (che, representing the phoneme ) and $\langlell\rangle$ (elle, representing the phoneme ), were also considered single letters. However, the digraph $\langlerr\rangle$ (erre fuerte, 'strong r', erre doble, 'double r', or simply erre), which also represents a distinct phoneme, was not similarly regarded as a single letter. Since 1994 $\langlech\rangle$ and $\langlell\rangle$ have been treated as letter pairs for collation purposes, though they remained a part of the alphabet until 2010. Words with $\langlech\rangle$ are now alphabetically sorted between those with $\langlecg\rangle$ and $\langleci\rangle$, instead of following $\langlecz\rangle$ as they used to. The situation is similar for $\langlell\rangle$.

Thus, the Spanish alphabet has the following 27 letters:


 * A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.

Since 2010, none of the digraphs (ch, ll, rr, gu, qu) is considered a letter by the Spanish Royal Academy.

The letters k and w are used only in words and names coming from foreign languages (kilo, folklore, whisky, kiwi, etc.).

With the exclusion of a very small number of regional terms such as México (see Toponymy of Mexico), pronunciation can be entirely determined from spelling. Under the orthographic conventions, a typical Spanish word is stressed on the syllable before the last if it ends with a vowel (not including $\langley\rangle$) or with a vowel followed by $\langlen\rangle$ or an $\langles\rangle$; it is stressed on the last syllable otherwise. Exceptions to this rule are indicated by placing an acute accent on the stressed vowel.

The acute accent is used, in addition, to distinguish between certain homophones, especially when one of them is a stressed word and the other one is a clitic: compare el ('the', masculine singular definite article) with él ('he' or 'it'), or te ('you', object pronoun) with té ('tea'), de (preposition 'of') versus dé ('give' [formal imperative/third-person present subjunctive]), and se (reflexive pronoun) versus sé ('I know' or imperative 'be').

The interrogative pronouns (qué, cuál, dónde, quién, etc.) also receive accents in direct or indirect questions, and some demonstratives (ése, éste, aquél, etc.) can be accented when used as pronouns. Accent marks used to be omitted on capital letters (a widespread practice in the days of typewriters and the early days of computers when only lowercase vowels were available with accents), although the Real Academia Española advises against this and the orthographic conventions taught at schools enforce the use of the accent.

When u is written between g and a front vowel e or i, it indicates a "hard g" pronunciation. A diaeresis ü indicates that it is not silent as it normally would be (e.g., cigüeña, 'stork', is pronounced ; if it were written *cigueña, it would be pronounced *).

Interrogative and exclamatory clauses are introduced with inverted question and exclamation marks (¿ and ¡, respectively).

Royal Spanish Academy
The Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), founded in 1713, together with the 21 other national ones (see Association of Spanish Language Academies), exercises a standardizing influence through its publication of dictionaries and widely respected grammar and style guides. Because of influence and for other sociohistorical reasons, a standardized form of the language (Standard Spanish) is widely acknowledged for use in literature, academic contexts and the media.

Association of Spanish Language Academies
The Association of Spanish Language Academies (Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, or ASALE) is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world. It comprises the academies of 23 countries, ordered by date of Academy foundation: Spain (1713), Colombia (1871), Ecuador (1874), Mexico (1875), El Salvador (1876), Venezuela (1883), Chile (1885), Peru (1887), Guatemala (1887), Costa Rica (1923), Philippines (1924), Panama (1926), Cuba (1926), Paraguay (1927), Dominican Republic (1927), Bolivia (1927), Nicaragua (1928), Argentina (1931), Uruguay (1943), Honduras (1949), Puerto Rico (1955), United States (1973) and Equatorial Guinea (2016).

Cervantes Institute
The Instituto Cervantes (Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. This organization has branched out in over 20 different countries, with 75 centers devoted to the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures and Spanish language. The ultimate goals of the Institute are to promote universally the education, the study, and the use of Spanish as a second language, to support methods and activities that help the process of Spanish-language education, and to contribute to the advancement of the Spanish and Hispanic American cultures in non-Spanish-speaking countries. The Institute's 2015 report "El español, una lengua viva" (Spanish, a living language) estimated that there were 559 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Its latest annual report "El español en el mundo 2018" (Spanish in the world 2018) counts 577 million Spanish speakers worldwide. Among the sources cited in the report is the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimates that the U.S. will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.

Official use by international organizations
Spanish is one of the official languages of the United Nations, the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of American States, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, the Latin Union, the Caricom, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and numerous other international organizations.

January

 * January 1
 * The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is established.
 * The Zapatista Army of National Liberation begins their war in Chiapas, Mexico.
 * January 8 – Soyuz TM-18: Valeri Polyakov begins his 437.7 day orbit, eventually setting the world record for days spent in orbit.
 * January 11 – The Irish government announces the end of a 15-year broadcasting ban on the Provisional Irish Republican Army and its political arm Sinn Féin.
 * January 14 – U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign the Kremlin accords, which stop the preprogrammed aiming of nuclear missiles toward each country's targets, and also provide for the dismantling of the nuclear arsenal in Ukraine.
 * January 17 – The 6.7 Northridge earthquake strikes the Greater Los Angeles Area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 57 people dead and more than 8,700 injured.
 * January 19 – Record cold temperatures hit the eastern United States. The coldest temperature ever measured in Indiana state history, −36 °F (−38 °C), is recorded in New Whiteland, Indiana.
 * January 25 – U.S. President Bill Clinton delivers his first State of the Union address, calling for health care reform, a ban on assault weapons, and welfare reform.
 * January 26 – Student David Kang fires two blank shots from a starting pistol at Prince Charles in Sydney, Australia.

February

 * February 3 – In the aftermath of the Chadian–Libyan conflict, the International Court of Justice rules that the Aouzou Strip belongs to the Republic of Chad.
 * February 5 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
 * February 6 – Markale massacres: a Bosnian Serb Army mortar shell kills 68 civilians and wounds about 200 in a Sarajevo marketplace.
 * February 9 – The Vance–Owen peace plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina is announced.
 * February 12
 * Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is stolen in Oslo (it is recovered on May 7).
 * The 1994 Winter Olympics begin in Lillehammer.
 * February 24 – In Gloucester, local police begin excavations at 25 Cromwell Street, the home of Fred West, a suspect in multiple murders. On February 28, he and his wife are arrested.
 * February 25 – Israeli Kahanist Baruch Goldstein opens fire inside the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank; he kills 29 Muslims before worshippers beat him to death.
 * February 28
 * Four United States F-16s shoot down four Serbian J-21s over Bosnia and Herzegovina for violation of the Operation Deny Flight and its no-fly zone.
 * At midnight Walvis Bay is officially handed over to Namibia by South Africa.

March

 * March – The People's Republic of China gets its first connection to the Internet.
 * March 6 – A referendum in Moldova results in the electorate voting against possible reunification with Romania.
 * March 12
 * A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as "proof" of the Loch Ness Monster, is confirmed to be a hoax.
 * The Church of England ordains its first female priests.
 * March 14 – Apple Computer, Inc. releases the first Macintosh computers to use the new PowerPC Microprocessors.
 * March 15 – U.S. troops are withdrawn from Somalia.
 * March 20 – Italian journalist Ilaria Alpi and TV cameraman Miran Hrovatin are assassinated in Somalia.
 * March 21 – The 66th Academy Awards, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Steven Spielberg's Holocaust drama, Schindler's List, wins seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director (Spielberg).
 * March 23
 * Green Ramp disaster: two military aircraft collide over Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina causing 24 fatalities.
 * Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana.
 * March 27
 * TV tycoon Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition wins the Italian general election.
 * The biggest tornado outbreak in 1994 occurs in the southeastern United States; one tornado kills 22 people at the Goshen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, Alabama.
 * March 28 – Shell House massacre: Inkatha Freedom Party and ANC supporters battle in central Johannesburg, South Africa.
 * March 31 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

April

 * April 2 – The National Convention of New Sudan of the SPLA/M opens in Chukudum.
 * April 6 – Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira die when a missile shoots down their jet near Kigali, Rwanda. This is taken as a pretext to begin the Rwandan genocide.
 * April 7 – The Rwandan genocide begins in Kigali, Rwanda.
 * April 16 – Voters in Finland decide to join the European Union in a referendum.
 * April 20 – South Africa adopts a new national flag, replacing the "Oranje, Blanje, Blou" flag that was used during apartheid.
 * April 21 – The Red Cross estimates that hundreds of thousands of Tutsi have been killed in Rwanda.
 * April 25 – Sultan Azlan Muhibbudin Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Yusuff Izzudin Shah Ghafarullahu-lahu ends his term as the 9th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
 * April 26
 * Tuanku Jaafar ibni Almarhum Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Yang di-Pertuan Besar of Negeri Sembilan, becomes the 10th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
 * China Airlines Flight 140, an Airbus A300, crashes while landing at Nagoya, Japan, killing 264 people.
 * April 27 – South Africa holds its first fully multiracial elections, marking the final end of the last vestiges of apartheid. Nelson Mandela wins the elections and is sworn in as the first democratic president the following month.

May

 * May 1 – Three-time Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna is killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy.
 * May 5 – The Bishkek Protocol between Armenia and Azerbaijan is signed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; effectively freezing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
 * May 6 – The Channel Tunnel, which took 15,000 workers more than seven years to complete, opens between England and France, enabling passengers to travel between the two countries in 35 minutes.
 * May 10
 * Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.
 * May 17 – Malawi holds its first multiparty elections.
 * May 20 – After a funeral in Cluny Parish Church, Edinburgh attended by 900 people and after which 3,000 people lined the streets, John Smith is buried in a private family funeral on the island of Iona, at the sacred burial ground of Reilig Odhráin, which contains the graves of several Scottish kings as well as monarchs of Ireland, Norway and France.
 * May 22 – Pope John Paul II issues the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis from the Vatican, expounding the Catholic Church's position requiring "the reservation of priestly ordination to men alone".

June

 * June 1 – The Republic of South Africa rejoins the Commonwealth after the first democratic election. South Africa left the then British Commonwealth in 1961.
 * June 6–8 – Ceasefire negotiations for the Yugoslav War begin in Geneva; they agree to a one-month cessation of hostilities (which does not last more than a few days).
 * June 12 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman are murdered outside the Simpson home in Los Angeles. O. J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in a civil suit.
 * June 15 – Israel and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.
 * June 17
 * NFL star O. J. Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings flee from police in his white Ford Bronco. The low-speed chase ends at Simpson's Brentwood, Los Angeles mansion, where he surrenders.
 * The 1994 FIFA World Cup starts in the United States.
 * June 23 – The International Olympic Committee celebrates its first centennial.
 * June 25 – Cold War: the last Russian troops leave Germany.
 * June 26 – Microsoft announces it will no longer sell or support the MS-DOS operating system separately from Microsoft Windows. This had been its mainstay since 1980.
 * June 28 – Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult execute the first sarin gas attack at Matsumoto, Japan, killing eight and injuring 200.
 * June 30 – An Airbus A330 crashes during a test flight near Toulouse, France, where Airbus is based, killing the seven-person crew. The test was meant to simulate an engine failure at low speed with maximum angle of climb.
 * June 30
 * The Liberal Democratic Party in Japan regained power after spent 11 months of opposition, with the coalition with Japanese Socialist Party.
 * Tropical Storm Alberto forms, hitting parts of Florida causing $1.03 billion in damage and 32 deaths.

July

 * July 2 – Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar, 27, is shot dead in Medellín. His murder is commonly attributed as retaliation for the own goal Escobar scored in the 1994 FIFA World Cup against the United States soccer team.
 * July 4 – Rwandan Patriotic Front troops capture Kigali, a major breakthrough in the Rwandan Civil War.
 * July 5 – Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.
 * July 7 – 1994 civil war in Yemen: Aden is occupied by troops from North Yemen.
 * July 8 – North Korean President Kim Il-sung dies, but officially continues to hold office.
 * July 12 – The Allied occupation of Berlin ends with a casing of the colors ceremony attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton.
 * July 16–22 – Fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 impact the planet Jupiter.
 * July 17 – Brazil wins the 1994 FIFA World Cup, defeating Italy 3–2 in a penalty shootout in the final (full-time 0–0).
 * July 18
 * AMIA bombing: In Buenos Aires, a terrorist attack destroys a building housing several Jewish organizations, killing 85 and injuring many more.
 * Rwandan Patriotic Front troops capture Gisenyi, forcing the interim government into Zaire and ending the Rwandan genocide.
 * July 25 – Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration as a preliminary to signature on October 25 of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, which formally ends the state of war that has existed between the nations since 1948.

August

 * August 5 – Groups of protesters spread from Havana, Cuba's Castillo de la Punta ("Point Castle"), creating the first protests against Fidel Castro's government since 1959.
 * August 12
 * Woodstock '94 begins in Saugerties, New York. It is the 25-year anniversary of Woodstock in 1969.
 * All Major League Baseball players go on strike, beginning the longest work stoppage in the sport's history.
 * August 31
 * The Provisional Irish Republican Army announces a "complete cessation of military operations".
 * The Russian army leaves Estonia and Latvia, ending the last traces of Eastern Europe's Soviet occupation.

September

 * September 3 – Cold War: Russia and the People's Republic of China agree to de-target their nuclear weapons against each other.
 * September 5 – New South Wales State MP for Cabramatta John Newman is shot outside his home, in Australia's first political assassination since 1977.
 * September 8 – USAir Flight 427, a Boeing 737 with 132 people on board, crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport killing all on board.
 * September 13 – President Bill Clinton signs the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which bans the manufacture of new firearms with certain features for a period of 10 years.
 * September 14 – The 1994 World Series is officially cancelled due to the ongoing work stoppage. It is the first time a World Series will not be played since 1904.
 * September 16
 * Danish tour guide Louise Jensen is abducted, raped and murdered by three British soldiers in Cyprus.
 * Britain lifts the broadcasting ban imposed on Sinn Féin and paramilitary groups from Northern Ireland.
 * September 19 – American troops stage a bloodless invasion of Haiti to restore the legitimate elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power.
 * September 28
 * The car ferry MS Estonia sinks in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
 * José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, Mexican politician, is assassinated on orders of Raúl Salinas de Gortari.
 * September–October – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq threatens to stop cooperating with UNSCOM inspectors and begins to once again deploy troops near its border with Kuwait. In response, the U.S. begins to deploy troops to Kuwait.

October

 * October 1
 * In Slovakia, populist leader Vladimír Mečiar wins the general election.
 * Palau gains independence from the United Nations Trusteeship Council.
 * October 4 – In Switzerland, 23 members of the Order of the Solar Temple cult are found dead, a day after 25 of their fellow cultists are similarly discovered in Morin-Heights, Quebec.
 * October 8 – Iraq disarmament crisis: The President of the United Nations Security Council says that Iraq must withdraw its troops from the Kuwait border, and immediately cooperate with weapons inspectors.
 * October 12 – NASA loses radio contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere either October 13 or October 14).
 * October 15
 * After three years of U.S. exile, Haiti's president Aristide returns to his country.
 * Iraq disarmament crisis: following threats by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S., Iraq withdraws troops from its border with Kuwait.

November

 * November 5
 * A letter by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, announcing that he has Alzheimer's disease, is released.
 * George Foreman wins the WBA and IBF World Heavyweight Championships by KO'ing Michael Moorer becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.
 * Johan Heyns, an influential Afrikaner theologian and critic of apartheid, is assassinated.
 * November 6
 * A flood in Piedmont, Italy, kills dozens of people.
 * Bražuolė bridge bombing in Lithuania damages a railway bridge but trains are stopped in time to avoid casualties.
 * November 7 – WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world's first internet radio broadcast.
 * November 8
 * Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich leads the United States Republican Party in taking control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in midterm congressional elections, the first time in 40 years the Republicans secure control of both houses of Congress. George W. Bush is elected Governor of Texas.
 * Hurricane Gordon hits Central America, Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, Haiti and the Southeastern United States, causing $594 million in damages and 1,152 fatalities.
 * November 13
 * Voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union in a referendum.
 * The first passengers travel through the Channel Tunnel.
 * November 16 – A federal judge issues a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the State of California from implementing Proposition 187, that would have denied most public services to illegal aliens.
 * November 20 – The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol.
 * November 28 – Voters in Norway decide not to join the European Union in a referendum.

December

 * December 1 – Ernesto Zedillo takes office as President of Mexico.
 * December 2 – The Australian government agrees to pay reparations to indigenous Australians who were displaced during the nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 1950s and 1960s.
 * December 3 – Taiwan held the first full local elections; James Soong elected as the first and only direct elected Governor of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian became the first direct elected Mayor of Taipei, Wu Den-yih became the first directed Mayor of Kaohsiung.
 * December 11 – Russian president Boris Yeltsin orders troops into Chechnya.
 * December 13
 * The trial of former President Mengistu begins in Ethiopia.
 * Fred West, 53, a builder living in Gloucester, is remanded in custody, charged with murdering 12 people (including two of his own daughters) whose bodies are mostly found buried at his house in Cromwell Street. His wife Rose West, 41, is charged with 10 murders.
 * December 14 – Construction commences on the Three Gorges Dam, at Sandouping, China.
 * December 19
 * A planned exchange rate correction of the Mexican peso to the US dollar, becomes a massive financial meltdown in Mexico, unleashing the 'Tequila' effect on global financial markets. This prompts a US$50 billion "bailout" by the Clinton Administration.
 * Civil unions between same-sex couples are legalized in Sweden.
 * December 31 is skipped by the Phoenix Islands to switch from the UTC−11 time zone to UTC+13, and by the Line Islands to switch from UTC−10 to UTC+14. The latter becomes the earliest time zone in the world, one full day ahead of Hawaii.

Date unknown

 * Pyroclastic flows – clouds of scalding gas, pumice, and ash – rapidly descend an erupting Mount Merapi volcano in central Java, causing sixty deaths.
 * Online service America Online offers gateway to World Wide Web for the first time. This marked the beginning of easy accessibility of the Web to the average American.
 * The population of Nigeria exceeds 100 million, making the republic the first African nation to have a population above 100 million.

January

 * January 4 – Derrick Henry, American football player
 * January 5 – Zemgus Girgensons, Latvian ice hockey player
 * January 6
 * Catriona Gray, Filipino-Australian model and singer
 * Denis Suárez, Spanish footballer
 * Jameis Winston, American football player
 * January 10
 * Justin Basson, South African rugby union player
 * Landon Collins, American football player
 * Faith Kipyegon, Kenyan middle-distance runner
 * January 11 – Mathieu Marquet, Mauritian swimmer
 * January 12 – Emre Can, German footballer
 * January 14
 * Muktar Edris, Ethiopian long-distance runner
 * Kai, South Korean singer
 * January 15 – Eric Dier, English footballer
 * January 17 – Sajal Ali, Pakistani actress and model
 * January 18
 * Minzy, South Korean singer, rapper, and dancer
 * Sam Strike, English actor
 * January 19 – Matthias Ginter, German footballer
 * January 21 – Booboo Stewart, American actor
 * January 23
 * Addison Russell, American baseball player
 * Kwak Min-jeong, South Korean figure skater
 * January 24 – Juanpi, Venezuelan footballer
 * January 28 – Maluma, Colombian singer
 * January 29 – Ayane Sakura, Japanese voice actress

February

 * February 1 – Harry Styles, English singer
 * February 5 – Saki Nakajima, Japanese singer
 * February 6 – Charlie Heaton, English actor
 * February 8 – Nikki Yanofsky, Canadian singer
 * February 10
 * Seulgi, South Korean singer
 * Makenzie Vega, American actress
 * February 11 – Dansby Swanson, American baseball player
 * February 13
 * Memphis Depay, Dutch footballer
 * Axel Reymond, French Marathon swimmer
 * February 15 – Eric Dier, English footballer
 * February 16 – Federico Bernardeschi, Italian footballer
 * February 18 – J-Hope, South Korean rapper and songwriter
 * February 21
 * Hayley Orrantia, American actress
 * Wendy, South Korean-Canadian singer
 * February 23 – Dakota Fanning, American actress and fashion model
 * February 24 – Earl Sweatshirt, American rapper
 * February 25 – Eugenie Bouchard, Canadian tennis player
 * February 27 – Hou Yifan, Chinese chess player
 * February 28 – Arkadiusz Milik, Polish footballer

March

 * March 1
 * Justin Bieber, Canadian singer
 * Tyreek Hill, American football player
 * March 5 – Aislinn Paul, Canadian actress
 * March 7
 * Christina Gao, American figure skater
 * Chase Kalisz, American swimmer
 * Jordan Pickford, English footballer
 * March 8 – Dylan Tombides, Australian footballer (d. 2014)
 * March 10 – Bad Bunny, Puerto Rican singer
 * March 12 – Christina Grimmie, American singer (d. 2016)
 * March 13
 * Gerard Deulofeu, Spanish footballer
 * Yannick Gerhardt, German footballer
 * March 14 – Ansel Elgort, American actor, singer, and DJ
 * March 16 – Joel Embiid, Cameroonian basketball player
 * March 25 – Justin Prentice, American actor
 * March 26 – Mayu Watanabe, Japanese singer
 * March 27 – Yoan Cardinale, French footballer
 * March 28 – Jackson Wang, Hong Kong rapper
 * March 30
 * Alex Bregman, American baseball player
 * Haruka Shimazaki, Japanese singer

April

 * April 3 – Dylann Roof, American mass murderer
 * April 4 – Risako Sugaya, Japanese singer
 * April 6 – Jasmine Curtis-Smith, Filipina actress
 * April 11
 * Duncan Laurence, Dutch singer
 * Dakota Blue Richards, English actress
 * April 12
 * Eric Bailly, Ivorian footballer
 * Oh Sehun, South Korean singer
 * Saoirse Ronan, United States-born Irish actress
 * April 14 – Skyler Samuels, American actress
 * April 16 – Will Fuller, American football player
 * April 18 – Moisés Arias, American actor
 * April 25 – Omar McLeod, Jamaican hurdler
 * April 27 – Corey Seager, American baseball player

May

 * May 4 – Alexander Gould, American actor
 * May 5 – Marco Benassi, Italian footballer
 * May 6 – Mateo Kovačić, Croatian footballer
 * May 14 – Marquinhos, Brazilian footballer
 * May 16 – Miles Heizer, American actor
 * May 20 – Piotr Zieliński, Polish footballer
 * May 21 – Tom Daley, British diver
 * May 24 — Dimash Kudaibergen, Kazakh singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist
 * May 25
 * Kylee, Japanese-American singer
 * Aly Raisman, American gymnast
 * May 27
 * Maximilian Arnold, German footballer
 * Aymeric Laporte, French footballer
 * May 28
 * Son Yeon-jae South Korean rhythmic gymnast
 * John Stones, English footballer

June

 * June 11
 * Ivana Baquero, Spanish actress
 * Jessica Fox, Australian canoeist
 * Kevin Fret, Puerto Rican musician (d. 2019)
 * June 15
 * Vincent Janssen, Dutch footballer
 * Iñaki Williams, Spanish footballer
 * June 17
 * Amari Cooper, American football player
 * Shaq Lawson, American football player
 * June 18 – Takeoff, American rapper
 * June 20 – Leonard Williams, American football player
 * June 29
 * Camila Mendes, American actress
 * Leandro Paredes, Argentinian footballer

July

 * July 2 – Baba Rahman, Ghanaian footballer
 * July 6 – Corey Coleman, American football player
 * July 9 – Akiane Kramarik, American poet
 * July 10 – Iuri Medeiros, Portuguese footballer
 * July 16 – Mark Indelicato, American actor
 * July 17
 * Derrick Henry, American football player
 * Victor Lindelöf, Swedish footballer
 * Benjamin Mendy, French footballer
 * July 22 – Jaz Sinclair, American actress
 * July 27 – Winnie Harlow, Canadian model
 * July 29 – Daniele Rugani, Italian footballer
 * July 31 – Lil Uzi Vert, American rapper

August

 * August 3
 * Todd Gurley, American football player
 * Corentin Tolisso, French footballer
 * August 4
 * Mayuko Fukuda, Japanese actress
 * Bobby Shmurda, American rapper
 * August 8 − Lauv, American singer-songwriter
 * August 9 – Kelli Hubly, American soccer player
 * August 10 – Bernardo Silva, Portuguese footballer
 * August 13 – Filip Forsberg, Swedish ice hockey player
 * August 16 – Tippy Dos Santos, Filipino-American singer and actress
 * August 17
 * Tiémoué Bakayoko, French footballer
 * Jack Conklin, American football player
 * Taissa Farmiga, American actress
 * August 18
 * Madelaine Petsch, American actress
 * Morgan Sanson, French footballer
 * August 22 – Israel Broussard, American actor
 * August 27 – Ellar Coltrane, American actor
 * August 30 - Kwon So-hyun, South Korean actress and singer
 * August 31 — Can Aktav, Turkish football player

September

 * September 8
 * Bruno Fernandes, Portuguese footballer
 * Cameron Dallas, American internet personality and actor
 * September 11 – Jordi El Niño Polla, Spanish adult film actor
 * September 12
 * Mhairi Black, Scottish politician
 * RM, South Korean rapper and songwriter
 * September 21 – Ben Proud, English swimmer
 * September 22 – Carlos Correa, Puerto Rican-American baseball player
 * September 29 – Halsey, American singer

October

 * October 2 – Shekhinah, South African singer-songwriter
 * October 3 – Seth Jones, American ice hockey player
 * October 8 – Luca Hänni, Swiss singer-songwriter
 * October 9 – Jodelle Ferland, Canadian actress
 * October 10
 * Ilhoon, South Korean rapper, songwriter, and actor
 * Suzy, South Korean singer and actress
 * October 12
 * Sean Monahan, Canadian ice hockey player
 * Olivia Smoliga, American swimmer
 * October 14 – Jared Goff, American football player
 * October 15
 * Lil' Kleine, Dutch musician
 * Sebastián Yatra, Colombian singer
 * October 24
 * Bruma, Portuguese footballer
 * Krystal Jung, South Korean singer
 * Jalen Ramsey, American football player
 * October 25 – Manzoor Pashteen, Pakistani human rights activist
 * October 26 – Allie DeBerry, American actress and model
 * October 27 – Kurt Zouma, French footballer
 * October 30 – Miyū Tsuzurahara, Japanese actress

November

 * November 1 – James Ward-Prowse, English footballer
 * November 2 – Jordan Howard, American football player
 * November 3 − Ella Mai, British singer
 * November 4 – Deion Jones, American football player
 * November 10
 * Zoey Deutch, American actress
 * Óliver Torres, Spanish footballer
 * November 15
 * Tyler Boyd, American football player
 * Emma Dumont, American actress, model, and dancer
 * November 21 – Saúl Ñíguez, Spanish footballer
 * November 22 – Dacre Montgomery, Australian actor
 * November 24 – Nabil Bentaleb, Algerian footballer
 * November 28 – Bonnie Anderson, Australian singer
 * November 29 – Julius Randle, American basketball player
 * November 30 – Nyjah Huston, American skateboarder

December

 * December 3 – Jake T. Austin, American actor
 * December 6 – Giannis Antetokounmpo, Greek basketball player
 * December 7
 * Yuzuru Hanyu, Japanese figure skater
 * Hunter Henry, American football player
 * December 8
 * Conseslus Kipruto, Kenyan middle distance runner
 * Raheem Sterling, English footballer
 * December 9 - Zach Veach, American race car driver
 * December 10 – Matti Klinga, Finnish footballer
 * December 16 - Christopher Bell, American race car driver
 * December 17 – Nat Wolff, American actor
 * December 19 – Michele Bravi, Italian singer
 * December 23 – Tajae Sharpe, American football player
 * December 26 – Dalyn Dawkins, American football player
 * December 28 – Adam Peaty, English swimmer

January

 * January 1
 * Arthur Espie Porritt, New Zealand politician and athlete (b. 1900)
 * Cesar Romero, Cuban-American actor (b. 1907)
 * Edward Arthur Thompson, British historian (b. 1914)
 * January 2 – Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, French director of the IMF (b. 1912)
 * January 3 – Frank Belknap Long, American writer (b. 1901)
 * January 5
 * Brian Johnston, British cricket commentator (b. 1912)
 * Elmar Lipping, Estonian statesman and soldier (b. 1906)
 * Tip O'Neill, American politician (b. 1912)
 * January 7 – Phoumi Vongvichit, President of Laos (b. 1909)
 * January 8
 * Pat Buttram, American actor (b. 1915)
 * Chandrashekarendra Saraswati, Indian sage (b. 1894)
 * January 9
 * Madge Ryan, Australian actress (b. 1919)
 * Johnny Temple, American baseball player (b. 1927)
 * January 11 – John Bradley, American Navy sailor (b. 1923)
 * January 12 – Samuel Bronston, American film producer and director (b. 1908)
 * January 13 – Johan Jørgen Holst, Norwegian politician and diplomat (b. 1937)
 * January 14
 * Esther Ralston, American actress (b. 1902)
 * Delio Rodríguez, Spanish cyclist (b. 1916)
 * Zino Davidoff, Ukrainian businessman (b. 1906)
 * Federica Montseny, Spanish politician (b. 1905)
 * January 15 – Harry Nilsson, American musician (b. 1941)
 * January 17
 * Helen Stephens, American runner (b. 1918)
 * Chung Il-kwon, South Korean politician (b. 1917)
 * January 20
 * Matt Busby, Scottish football manager (b. 1909)
 * Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenyan politician (b. 1911)
 * January 22
 * Jean-Louis Barrault, French actor and director (b. 1910)
 * Frances Gifford, American actress (b. 1920)
 * Telly Savalas, American actor (b. 1922)
 * January 23
 * Brian Redhead, British journalist and broadcaster (b. 1929)
 * Nikolai Ogarkov, Soviet marshal (b. 1917)
 * January 25 – Stephen Cole Kleene, American mathematician (b. 1909)
 * January 27 – Claude Akins, American actor (b. 1926)
 * January 28 – Hal Smith, American actor (b. 1916)
 * January 29
 * Ulrike Maier, Austrian alpine skier (b. 1967)
 * Nick Cravat, American actor and acrobat (b. 1912)
 * January 30
 * Pierre Boulle, French author (b. 1912)
 * Rudolf Schwarz, Austrian-born British conductor (b. 1902)
 * Bahjat Talhouni, Jordanian politician (b. 1913)

February

 * February 1 – Olan Soule, American actor (b. 1909)
 * February 2 – Marija Gimbutas, Lithuanian-American archeologist (b. 1921)
 * February 3 – Walter Havighurst, American critic, novelist, and historian (b. 1901)
 * February 4 – Jane Arbor, British writer (b. 1903)
 * February 6
 * Joseph Cotten, American actor (b. 1905)
 * Jack Kirby, American comic book writer and illustrator (b. 1917)
 * February 7
 * Witold Lutosławski, Polish composer (b. 1913)
 * Arnold Smith, Canadian diplomat (b. 1915)
 * February 9 – Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist (b. 1934)
 * February 11
 * Neil Bonnett, American race car driver (b. 1946)
 * Sorrell Booke, American actor (b. 1930)
 * William Conrad, American actor (b. 1920)
 * Paul Feyerabend, Austrian philosopher (b. 1924)
 * Antonio Martín, Spanish cyclist (b. 1970)
 * February 12 – Donald Judd, American artist (b. 1928)
 * February 14
 * Christopher Lasch, American historian, moralist, and social critic (b. 1932)
 * Andrei Chikatilo, Russian serial killer (executed) (b. 1936)
 * February 17 – Randy Shilts, American author and activist (b. 1951)
 * February 19 – Derek Jarman, English film director (b. 1942)
 * February 22 – Papa John Creach, American fiddler (b. 1917)
 * February 24
 * Jean Sablon, French singer (b. 1906)
 * Dinah Shore, American actress and singer (b. 1916)
 * Henry Milton Taylor, 3rd Governor-General of the Bahamas (b. 1903)
 * February 25 – Jersey Joe Walcott, American boxer (b. 1914)
 * February 26 – Bill Hicks, American comedian (b. 1961)
 * February 28 – Josephat Karanja, Kenyan politician (b. 1931)

March

 * March 2
 * Peter Cureton, Canadian actor and playwright
 * Anita Morris, American actress and singer (b. 1943)
 * March 4 – John Candy, Canadian comedian and actor (b. 1950)
 * March 5 – Abdullah al-Sallal, 1st President of the Yemen Arab Republic (b. 1917)
 * March 6
 * Ray Arcel, American boxing trainer (b. 1899)
 * Melina Mercouri, Greek actress and politician (b. 1920)
 * March 9
 * Charles Bukowski, American writer (b. 1920)
 * Fernando Rey, Spanish actor (b. 1917)
 * Lawrence E. Spivak, American journalist (b. 1900)
 * March 10 – D. J. M. Mackenzie, New Zealand-born British medical officer (b. 1905)
 * March 11 – Kaku Takashina, Japanese actor (b. 1919)
 * March 13
 * Danny Barker, American musician (b. 1909)
 * Buddy Rosar, American baseball player (b. 1914)
 * March 17
 * Ellsworth Vines, American tennis player (b. 1911)
 * Mai Zetterling, Swedish actor and director (b. 1925)
 * March 20 – Lewis Grizzard, American writer and humorist (b. 1946)
 * March 21
 * Macdonald Carey, American actor (b. 1913)
 * Dack Rambo, American actor (b. 1941)
 * March 22
 * Dan Hartman, American musician (b. 1950)
 * Walter Lantz, American cartoonist (b. 1899)
 * March 23
 * Álvaro del Portillo, Spanish Roman Catholic prelate (b. 1914)
 * Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mexican politician (b. 1950)
 * Giulietta Masina, Italian actress (b. 1921)
 * March 25 – Max Petitpierre, Swiss politician (b. 1899)
 * March 28
 * Eugène Ionesco, Romanian-born playwright (b. 1909)
 * Ira Murchison, American athlete (b. 1933)
 * March 29 – Bill Travers, English actor (b. 1922)

April

 * April 1
 * Léon Degrelle, Belgian politician and Nazi collaborator (b. 1906)
 * Robert Doisneau, French photographer (b. 1912)
 * April 2 – Betty Furness, American actress, author, and consumer advocate (b. 1916)
 * April 3 – Jérôme Lejeune, French pediatrician and geneticist (b. 1926)
 * April 5 – Kurt Cobain, American singer and songwriter (b. 1967)
 * April 6
 * Juvénal Habyarimana, 3rd President of Rwanda (b. 1937)
 * Cyprien Ntaryamira, 5th President of Burundi (b. 1955)
 * April 7
 * Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Prime Minister of Rwanda (b. 1953)
 * Albert Guðmundsson, Icelandic footballer and politician (b. 1923)
 * Golo Mann, German historian (b. 1909)
 * April 10
 * Sam B. Hall, American politician (b. 1924)
 * Viktor Afanasyev, Soviet journalist (b. 1922)
 * April 11 – Hal Lawrence, Canadian naval officer (b. 1920)
 * April 14
 * Manuel Andújar, Spanish writer (b. 1913)
 * Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani chemist (b. 1897)
 * Hugh Springer, Governor-General of Barbados (b. 1913)
 * April 15 – John Curry, British figure skater (b. 1949)
 * April 16 – Ralph Ellison, American writer (b. 1914)
 * April 17 – Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist (b. 1913)
 * April 18 – Ken Oosterbroek, South African photojournalist (b. 1962)
 * April 22 – Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States (b. 1913)
 * April 24 – Masutatsu Ōyama, Korean-Japanese Karate master (b. 1923)
 * April 27 – Lynne Frederick, English actress (b. 1954)
 * April 28 – Berton Roueché, American writer (b. 1910)
 * April 29
 * Russell Kirk, American political philosopher (b. 1918)
 * Sak Sutsakhan, Cambodian politician (b. 1928)
 * April 30
 * Roland Ratzenberger, Austrian Formula One driver (b. 1960)
 * Richard Scarry, American author (b. 1919)
 * Sorie Ibrahim Koroma, Prime Minister of Sierra Leone (b. 1930)

May

 * May 1 – Ayrton Senna, Brazilian Formula One driver (b. 1960)
 * May 2
 * William Albertini, English cricketer (b. 1913)
 * Dorothy Marie Donnelly, American poet (b. 1908)
 * May 5 – Joe Layton, American director and choreographer (b. 1931)
 * May 7 – Clement Greenberg, American art critic (b. 1909)
 * May 8 – George Peppard, American actor (b. 1928)
 * May 10 – John Wayne Gacy, American serial killer (b. 1942)
 * May 12
 * Erik Erikson, Danish-American developmental psychologist (b. 1902)
 * John Smith, Scottish politician (b. 1938)
 * Roy J. Plunkett, American chemist (b. 1910)
 * May 14 – W. Graham Claytor, Jr., American businessman and naval officer (b. 1914)
 * May 15
 * Royal Dano, American actor (b. 1922)
 * Gilbert Roland, American actor (b. 1905)
 * May 16 – Alain Cuny, French actor (b. 1908)
 * May 17 – Étienne Hirsch, French engineer and administrator (b. 1901)
 * May 19
 * Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American socialite, conservationist, and First Lady of the United States (b. 1929)
 * Henry Morgan, American comedian (b. 1915)
 * Luis Ocaña, Spanish bicycle racer (b. 1945)
 * May 21
 * Giovanni Goria, Italian Prime Minister (b. 1943)
 * Masayoshi Ito, Japanese politician (b. 1913)
 * Ralph Miliband, Polish-born British academic (b. 1924)
 * Johan Hendrik Weidner, Belgian World War II resistance fighter (b. 1912)
 * May 26 – Sonny Sharrock, American jazz musician (b. 1940)
 * May 27 – Red Rodney, American trumpeter (b. 1927)
 * May 28 – Julius Boros, American golfer (b. 1920)
 * May 29 – Erich Honecker, East German politician (b. 1912)
 * May 30
 * Juan Carlos Onetti, Uruguayan novelist (b. 1909)
 * Marcel Bich, French businessman (b. 1914)
 * Ezra Taft Benson, American religious leader (b. 1899)
 * May 31 – Sidney Gilliat, British film director (b. 1908)

June

 * June 2 – David Stove, Australian philosopher (b. 1927)
 * June 3 – Jack Cowie, New Zealand cricketer (b. 1912)
 * June 4
 * Benedict J. Semmes Jr., American admiral (b. 1913)
 * Peter Thorneycroft, British politician (b. 1909)
 * June 6 – Barry Sullivan, American actor (b. 1912)
 * June 7 – Dennis Potter, English dramatist (b. 1935)
 * June 9 – Jan Tinbergen, Dutch economist (b. 1903)
 * June 10 – Edward Kienholz, American artist and sculptor (b. 1927)
 * June 12
 * Ron Goldman, American model, waiter (b. 1968)
 * Menachem Mendel Schneerson, American Hasidic rabbinical leader (b. 1902)
 * Nicole Brown Simpson, German-American actress, waitress (b. 1959)
 * June 13 – K. T. Stevens, American actress (b. 1919)
 * June 14
 * Lionel Grigson, British jazz pianist, composer and educator (b. 1942)
 * Henry Mancini, American composer and arranger (b. 1924)
 * June 15 – Manos Hatzidakis, Greek composer (b. 1925)
 * June 16 – Kristen Pfaff, American bassist (b. 1967)
 * June 20 – Jay Miner, American computer pioneer (b. 1932)
 * June 21 – William Wilson Morgan, American astronomer and astrophysicist (b. 1906)
 * June 29 – Kurt Eichhorn, German conductor (b. 1908)

July

 * July 2
 * Roberto Balado, Cuban boxer (b. 1969)
 * Maung Maung, President of Myanmar (b. 1925)
 * Marion Williams, American gospel singer (b. 1927)
 * July 3 – Lew Hoad, Australian tennis player (b. 1934)
 * July 6 – Ahmet Haxhiu, Albanian political activist (b. 1932)
 * July 7
 * Anita Garvin, American actress (b. 1907)
 * Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, German Luftwaffe officer (b. 1907)
 * Cameron Mitchell, American actor (b. 1918)
 * July 8
 * Christian-Jaque, French film director (b. 1904)
 * Kim Il-sung, President of North Korea (b. 1912)
 * Dick Sargent, American actor (b. 1930)
 * July 11 – Gary Kildall, American computer inventor (b. 1942)
 * July 14 – César Tovar, Venezuelan baseball player (b. 1940)
 * July 16
 * Patricio Carvajal, Chilean admiral, minister, and diplomat (b. 1916)
 * Julian Schwinger, American physicist (b. 1918)
 * July 17 – Jean Borotra, French tennis player (b. 1898)
 * July 19 – Ray Flaherty, American football coach (b. 1903)
 * July 20 – Paul Delvaux, Belgian painter (b. 1897)
 * July 21
 * Marijac, French cartoonist (b. 1908)
 * Pere Calders, Spanish writer and cartoonist (b. 1912)
 * July 22 – Alexandre Hogue, American painter (b. 1898)
 * July 27 – Kevin Carter, South African photojournalist (b. 1960)
 * July 29 – Dorothy Hodgkin, British chemist (b. 1910)

August

 * August 4 – Giovanni Spadolini, Italian Prime Minister (b. 1925)
 * August 6 – Domenico Modugno, Italian singer-songwriter and actor turned politician (b. 1928)
 * August 11 – Peter Cushing, English actor (b. 1913)
 * August 13 – Manfred Wörner, German politician and diplomat (b. 1934)
 * August 14 – Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born writer (b. 1905)
 * August 17 – Jack Sharkey, American boxer (b. 1902)
 * August 18 – Richard Laurence Millington Synge, English chemist (b. 1914)
 * August 19 – Linus Pauling, American chemist (b. 1901)
 * August 21
 * Anita Lizana, Chilean tennis player (b. 1915)
 * Michael Peters, American choreographer (b. 1948)
 * August 23 – Zoltán Fábri, Hungarian film director (b. 1917)
 * August 28 – David Wright, South African poet (b. 1920)
 * August 30
 * Lindsay Anderson, British film director (b. 1923)
 * Hubert Zemke, American fighter ace (b. 1914)

September

 * September 2 – Roy Castle, British entertainer (b. 1932)
 * September 3 – Billy Wright, English footballer (b. 1924)
 * September 5 – Shimshon Amitsur, Israeli mathematician (b. 1921)
 * September 6
 * Nicky Hopkins, British musician (b. 1944)
 * Duccio Tessari, Italian director and screenwriter (b. 1926)
 * Paul Xuereb, Maltese politician (b. 1923)
 * September 7
 * James Clavell, British writer (b. 1921)
 * Dennis Morgan, American actor and singer (b. 1908)
 * Terence Young, British film director (b. 1915)
 * September 8 – János Szentágothai, Hungarian anatomist (b. 1912)
 * September 9 – Patrick O'Neal, American actor (b. 1927)
 * September 11 – Jessica Tandy, English-born American actress (b. 1909)
 * September 12
 * Tom Ewell, American actor (b. 1909)
 * Boris Yegorov, Russian cosmonaut (b. 1937)
 * September 15 – Mark Stevens, American actor (b. 1916)
 * September 16 – Jack Dodson, American actor (b. 1931)
 * September 17
 * Vitas Gerulaitis, American tennis player (b. 1954)
 * Karl Popper, Austrian-British philosopher (b. 1902)
 * September 18 – Franco Moschino, Italian fashion designer (b. 1950)
 * September 19 – Joseph Iléo, Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (b. 1921)
 * September 20
 * Abioseh Nicol, Sierra Leonean diplomat and author (b. 1924)
 * Jule Styne, English-born American songwriter (b. 1905)
 * September 22 – Bud Sagendorf, American cartoonist (b. 1915)
 * September 23 – Robert Bloch, American writer (b. 1917)
 * September 24 – Sir David Napley, British solicitor (b. 1915)
 * September 26 – Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia (b. 1907)
 * September 27
 * Vernon Kirby, South African tennis player (b. 1911)
 * Carlos Lleras Restrepo, President of Colombia (b. 1908)
 * September 28 – José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, Mexican politician (b. 1946)
 * September 30
 * André Michel Lwoff, French microbiologist (b. 1902)
 * Roberto Eduardo Viola, military president of Argentina (b. 1924)

October

 * October 2 – Harriet Nelson, American actress (b. 1909)
 * October 3
 * Tim Asch, American anthropologist (b. 1932)
 * Dub Taylor, American actor (b. 1907)
 * October 7
 * Niels Kaj Jerne, English immunologist (b. 1911)
 * James Hill, British film and television director (b. 1919)
 * October 15 – Sarah Kofman, French philosopher (b. 1934)
 * October 19 – Martha Raye, American actress and comedian (b. 1916)
 * October 18 – Conchita Montes, Spanish actress (b. 1914)
 * October 19 – Oldřich Černík, Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia (b. 1921)
 * October 20
 * Sergei Bondarchuk, Russian film director (b. 1920)
 * Burt Lancaster, American actor (b. 1913)
 * October 21 – Benoît Régent, French actor (b. 1953)
 * October 22 – Fabio Grobart, Cuban politician (b. 1905)
 * October 23 – Robert Lansing, American actor (b. 1928)
 * October 24
 * Gamini Dissanayake, Sri Lankan politician (b. 1942)
 * Raúl Juliá, Puerto Rican-American actor and singer (b. 1940)
 * October 25 – Mildred Natwick, American actress (b. 1905)
 * October 28 – Calvin S. Fuller, American physical chemist (b. 1902)
 * October 29 – Shlomo Goren, Israeli rabbi (b. 1918)

November

 * November 1 – Noah Beery Jr., American actor (b. 1913)
 * November 4 – Ashish Kumar Louho, Bangladeshi actor (b. 1937)
 * November 5 – Johan Heyns, South African theologian and apartheid critic (b. 1928)
 * November 9 – Priscilla Morrill, American actress (b. 1927)
 * November 10 – Carmen McRae, American jazz singer (b. 1920)
 * November 11
 * Dame Elizabeth Maconchy, British composer (b. 1907)
 * Pedro Zamora, Cuban-American AIDS activist (b. 1972)
 * November 12
 * Wilma Rudolph, American athlete (b. 1940)
 * J. I. M. Stewart, Scottish novelist (b. 1906)
 * November 13 – Motoo Kimura, Japanese geneticist (b. 1924)
 * November 14 – Tom Villard, American actor (b. 1953)
 * November 15 – Leandro Locsin, Filipino architect (b. 1928)
 * November 16
 * Doris Speed, English actress (b. 1899)
 * Dino Valente, American musician (b. 1937)
 * November 18
 * Cab Calloway, American jazz singer and bandleader (b. 1907)
 * Peter Ledger, Australian artist (b. 1945)
 * November 20 – John Lucarotti, British screenwriter (b. 1926)
 * November 21 — Pino Locchi, Italian actor and voice actor (b. 1925)
 * November 22 – Charles Upham, New Zealand soldier (b. 1908)
 * November 23 – Art Barr, American professional wrestler (b. 1966)
 * November 28
 * Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer (b. 1960)
 * Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, Spanish cardinal (b. 1907)
 * November 30
 * Guy Debord, French theorist, writer, and filmmaker (b. 1931)
 * Lionel Stander, American actor (b. 1908)

December

 * December 4 – Sir Geoffrey Elton, British historian (b. 1921)
 * December 6 – Gian Maria Volonté, Italian actor (b. 1933)
 * December 8 – Antônio Carlos Jobim, Brazilian composer (b. 1927)
 * December 10 – Alex Wilson, Canadian athlete (b. 1905)
 * December 11
 * Philip Phillips, American archaeologist (b. 1900)
 * Carl Marzani, American filmmaker, author, editor and publisher (b. 1912)
 * December 12
 * Donna J. Stone, American poet and philanthropist (b. 1933)
 * Stuart Roosa, American astronaut (b. 1933)
 * December 13 – Hu Lanqi, Chinese revolutionary, general, and writer (b. 1901)
 * December 18 – Lilia Skala, Austrian-born American actress (b. 1896)
 * December 20
 * Hans Herlin, German novelist (b. 1925)
 * Dean Rusk, American diplomat (b. 1909)
 * December 23 – Sebastian Shaw, English actor (b. 1905)
 * December 24
 * John Boswell, American historian (b. 1947)
 * Rossano Brazzi, Italian actor (b. 1916)
 * John Osborne, English playwright (b. 1929)
 * December 25 – Zail Singh, 7th President of India (b. 1916)
 * December 26
 * Jock Campbell, Baron Campbell of Eskan, British businessman and life peer (b. 1912)
 * Allie Reynolds, American baseball player (b. 1917)
 * December 27
 * Fanny Cradock, British television chef and restaurant critic (b. 1909)
 * Peter May, English cricketer (b. 1929)
 * J. B. L. Reyes, Filipino jurist (b. 1902)
 * December 31 – Woody Strode, American athlete and actor (b. 1914)

Nobel Prizes

 * Physics – Bertram N. Brockhouse, Clifford Glenwood Shull
 * Chemistry – George Andrew Olah
 * Medicine – Alfred G. Gilman, Martin Rodbell
 * Literature – Kenzaburō Ōe
 * Peace – Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin
 * Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences – Reinhard Selten, John Forbes Nash, John Harsanyi

Templeton Prize

 * Michael Novak

Fields Medal

 * Efim Isakovich Zelmanov, Pierre-Louis Lions, Jean Bourgain, Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

Right Livelihood Award

 * Astrid Lindgren, SERVOL (Service Volunteered for All), H. Sudarshan / VGKK (Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra), Ken Saro-Wiwa / MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People)