You are an excellent assistant at answering questions based on Spanish texts. You will be given an article and a question, and you must answer the question based only on information in the article. The response should be extracted from the context verbatim.

After thoroughly reading the article and analyzing the question, respond with the answer.

Title:
Spanish_language_in_the_United_States

Context:
The Spanish language is the second most spoken language in the United States. There are 45 million Hispanophones who speak Spanish as a first or second language in the United States, as well as six million Spanish language students. Together, this makes the United States of America the second largest Hispanophone country in the world after Mexico, and with the United States having more Spanish-speakers than Colombia and Spain (but fewer first language speakers). Spanish is the Romance language and the Indo-European language with the largest number of native speakers in the world. Roughly half of all American Spanish-speakers also speak English "very well," based on their self-assessment in the U.S. Census.

Question:
How many people speak Spanish as a first or second language in the United States?

There are 45 million Hispanophones who speak Spanish as a first or second language in the United States,