The U.S. Overtakes Spain in the Number of Spanish Speakers

Linguists have been predicting that the U.S. will have more Spanish speakers than the original Spanish-speaking countries and the latest study revealed that indeed the U.S. has overtaken Spain in the number of Spanish speakers. According to the study, Mexico has the most speakers at the moment. Native Spanish speakers in the United States have reached 41 million, and another 11.6 million U.S. residents are bilingual. The highest concentrations of Spanish speakers can be found in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico.

Report

The study was conducted by Instituto Cervantes. The bilinguals according to the study were offsprings of immigrants whose first language is Spanish. With the combined figures, the U.S. now has a total of 52.6 million Spanish speakers, ranking ahead of Colombia, which has 48 million speakers and Spain, which has 46 million speakers. Mexico is still on top of the ladder with 121 million speakers. The report done by Instituto Cervantes is called El Español, UnaLengua Viva, which translates to Spanish, A Living Language. The report estimates that about 559 million Spanish speakers are located worldwide, 470 million of which are native speakers. Ethnologue’s latest data place the native speakers of Spanish worldwide at 399 million.

The Instituto Cervantes was formed in 1991 for the purpose of promoting the Spanish language outside of Spain. More than 200,000 have enrolled in their courses in 2014. According to the institute’s estimate, about 21 million people worldwide are learning Spanish. In the U.S. alone, there are 7.8 million Spanish-language learners, with France and Brazil also registering high number of students learning the language.

Data source

The data sources of Instituto Cervantes were official government sources and the U.S. Census Bureau. The bureau estimates that by the year 2050, the U.S. will have about 138 million residents who will be speaking Spanish, which will put the country at number one in the world.

The highest concentration of Spanish speakers is New Mexico, where 47 percent of the population speaks Spanish. This is followed by Texas and California with 38 percent and Arizona with 30 percent. Spanish is also spoken by 18 percent of the population in New York and about 1.3 percent of people living in West Virginia. In Alaska, 6 percent of the population speaks Spanish.

The high number of Spanish speakers in the U.S. does not come as a surprise because there was a 2.2 percent rise in the Hispanic population in 2014. Currently, Hispanics represent 17.4 percent of the total U.S. population, even if the growth has actually slowed down. The decline is due in part to the decrease in immigration from Latin American countries.

The report of Instituto Cervantes also included data showing that Spanish ranks second behind English as the most used language on Facebook and ranks third overall among online users worldwide.

Image Copyright: By Airman 1st Class Xavier Lockley (https://www.dvidshub.net/image/795885) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons