With 21 countries listing Spanish as an official language, and with it being a de facto language on nearly every continent, there’s a good reason to learn it. With 577 million speakers around the world, Spanish is the second most spoken language on earth, after Mandarin, and this figure is only set to increase. Not only is this due to a general rising global population, with the population of many Spanish speaking countries and communities set to rise, but also due to an increasing number of people studying Spanish.

While the English language is still the world’s most studied language by far, Spanish is a contender along with French and Mandarin for the second-most widely studied language with 21.8 million learners in 107 countries according to the Cervantes Institute. Most of these learners are in the US (8 million), Brazil (6 million) and France (2.5 million), with significant interest in countries like Italy, Côte d’Ivoire, Germany and the UK. This increase in learners has led to an interest in who exactly these close to 22 million people are and why they have chosen to learn Spanish. Obviously, the decision to learn a second language is often a personal choice and as such, there are many different reasons for learning Spanish depending on the general characteristics of countries.

Take the UK for example, where there are 519,000 Spanish learners. While the UK has traditionally favored French and German as second languages to study at school, there has been an increased preference for Spanish, in part likely due to a desire to communicate and interact with people while visiting or moving to the UK’s preferred holiday destination: Spain. While there is no doubt that many in the UK study Spanish for holiday reasons, it is also recognized as many as being a very important language for the future, according to the British Council.

The importance of Spanish as a global language in terms of employment, business and diplomacy also contributes to its popularity in many countries as Spanish is widely spoken and as such highly popular among certain professional circles. Similar patterns can also be seen throughout Europe in countries like Germany and Ireland, with a mix of cultural, tourist and business interests factoring into the equation. It is also interesting to note that Spanish is generally regarded as being an easy language to learn for English speakers, which may partially explain its prominence.

The US, with 8 million Spanish learners, has the largest number of Spanish learners on the planet. With over 40 million Spanish speakers and major communities of Mexicans, Cubans, Colombians and Puerto Ricans, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, with 88% of primary schools with language programs teaching Spanish. Massive parts of the US, including California, New Mexico and Arizona, were all also once under Mexican control and as such, there is a large Hispanophone influence on such states. This population of Spanish speakers is only predicted to increase and by 2060, it’s predicted that the US will be the second most Spanish-speaking country in the world after Mexico.

However, as in many other countries, the similar aspects of tourism (in this case primarily to Mexico), being a global language of importance to business and diplomacy and perceived ease all also affect the number of Spanish learners in the US. Considering the demographics of the US, there are also many Spanish learners who may want to better understand their compatriots in their native language or even learn the language that was spoken by their ancestors, with some in the growing Hispanic community having lost their language.

Considering its position as a global language, Spanish was ranked as the fourth most powerful language in 2016 and this looks only set to increase. With increasing online importance as the second most widely used language on Facebook and Twitter and the third most used language online, added to the Spanish-speaking cultural powerhouses of countries like Spain, Mexico and Argentina, and increasingly the US too, Spanish seems to be a language of the future and a language well worth studying for so many reasons.

With all this in mind, Spanish is an obvious language to study and engage in for cultural, business and personal reasons, as well as a clear favorite language for study among English speakers who don’t need to learn the current international lingua franca.

From the 27^th to the 30^th of March 2019, the Argentinian city of Córdoba will see academics, writers and language enthusiasts flock to it for the 8th International Congress of the Spanish Language (VIII Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española, CILE). Some 250 writers, academics, experts and professionals from all over the world are coming to the city for discussions centered around the theme “Latin America and the future of the Spanish language: Culture and education, technology and business”, debating the future of the language in Latin America and its use and challenges in a changing world.

However, the prestigious CILE, backed by renowned Spanish institutions like the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Cervantes Institute, isn’t in Córdoba alone. From the 26^th to the 29^th of March, something of a counter congress is being held by the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the National University of Córdoba, arguing that language is a human right and its development in Latin America doesn’t need the royal backing of Spain or its approval on the “correct” use and course of the language.

The presence of the two congresses not only raises key questions facing the Spanish language, but also society in general and how these changes are reflected in society. This CILE, promoted by the government of Argentina as well as the RAE, ASALE and Cervantes Institute, promises a discussion on the Latin American future of Spanish, the rise of digital technology, the economic value of Spanish, the challenges of cultural industries, linguistic tourism, translation, linguistic fusion, teaching the Spanish language and literature, and the importance of clear legal language, among many other topics. Among the guests present will be the writer María Teresa Andruetto, Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, King Felipe VI of Spain and Mauricio Macri, the President of Argentina.

The royal aspect of the CILE and the somewhat authoritarian approaches of the RAE and the Cervantes Institute to the Spanish language, such as stipulating the use of official Castilian forms to be considered “native”, have been interpreted as a little patronizing, and in this spirit the  I Encuentro Internacional: Derechos Lingüísticos como Derechos Humanos en Latinoamérica (First International Conference: Language Rights as Human Rights in Latin America) is being held by the National University of Córdoba to argue that the use of the language is a human right, not something to be controlled by Spain with Spain’s approval on defining the language. Spanish should be inclusive of the international nature of the language, varying enormously from place to place. It isn’t just dialects that many believe the likes of CILE overlook in their approach, but also the polemical gender issue in the Spanish language and gender neutrality in a gendered language, such as using the gender-neutral ‘e’ instead of the feminine ‘a’ and masculine ‘o’.

It is around this topic of inclusivity that the interesting issue of censorship also arises: should a language be changed to prevent offence? Should offensive words be removed to make Spanish more inclusive? In essence, the next few days will be filled with debate on issues that affect language and how they mirror issues we see in a rapidly changing society, such as staying up to date in the language, inclusivity and by that token discrimination and to whom does the Spanish language belong if not its half a billion speakers around the world.

VIII Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española – Program and Activities.

I Encuentro Internacional: Derechos Lingüísticos como Derechos Humanos en Latinoamérica – Program and Activities.

According to the latest annual report from the Spanish language institute, the Instituto Cervantes, more than 577 million people around the world speak Spanish, some 7.6% of the global population. By 2050, the Spanish speaking population is expected to increase to 756 million, an increase of 0.1%. This makes it the second most widely spoken native language on the planet, just after Mandarin Chinese.

This group of over half a billion people consists of the native speakers, second language speakers and foreign learners. Out of these, 480 million speak Spanish as their mother tongue while almost 22 million people across 107 countries around the world are learning the language. This figure regarding the use of foreign learners is expected to be approximately 25% larger as it does not account for private study.

The yearbook, which began operation in 1998, analyzes the current position of the Spanish language and its projections for the future. Its figures help the Instituto Cervantes to make decisions on issues such as opening new centers, prioritizing academic work or cultural dissemination, or promoting Spanish in international forums.

In the online world, Spanish is the third most widely used language after English and Chinese, comprising 8.1% of all online communication. It is also the third most widely learned foreign language, also after English and Chinese, with a particularly high level of popularity in the Anglophone world. In the United States, it is the most popular foreign language to study while it is perceived as the most important language to study for the future in the United Kingdom. France, Sweden and Denmark also demonstrate a keen interest in studying Spanish as a foreign language.

In terms of the sciences, despite the continued dominance of the English language, Spanish remains important and its use in global science has increased constantly since 1996, largely focusing on social sciences, medical sciences, and the arts and humanities.

With respect to film production, Spain, Argentina and Mexico are three Spanish-speaking countries that are among the top fifteen 15 in the world. Spain is also the third largest exporter of books and is among the leading book publishers, along with Argentina. Spanish is the third most popular language in which magazines are published, although it is far below English and French.

The director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, also noted when presenting the report that “the GDP generated of all Spanish-speaking countries (6.9% of world GDP) is higher than that generated by all countries whose official language is French”.

Spanish is the most widely spoken of the Romance languages, both in terms of number of speakers and the number of countries in which it is the dominant language. Besides being spoken in Spain, it is the official language of all the South American countries except Brazil and Guyana, of the six republics of Central America, as well as of Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Additionally, it is spoken in parts of Morocco and the west coast of Africa, and also in Equatorial Guinea. In the United States it is widely spoken in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California (in New Mexico it is co-official with English), in New York City by the large Puerto Rican population, and more recently in southern Florida by people who have arrived from Cuba. A variety of Spanish known as Ladino is spoken in Turkey and Israel by descendants of Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. All told there are about 350 million speakers of Spanish.

Pronunciation and usage of Spanish naturally vary between countries, but regional differences are not so great as to make the language unintelligible to speakers from different areas. The purest form of Spanish is known as Castilian, originally one of the dialects that developed from Latin after the Roman conquest of Hispania in the 3rd century A.D. After the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Spain was overrun by the Visigoths, and in the 8th century the Arabic-speaking Moors conquered all but the northernmost part of the peninsula. In the Christian reconquest, Castile, an independent kingdom, took the initiative and by the time of the unification of Spain in the 15th century, Castilian had become the dominant dialect. In the years that followed, Castilian, now Spanish, became the language of a vast empire in the New World.

Spanish vocabulary is basically of Latin origin, though many of the words differ markedly from their counterparts in French and Italian. Many words beginning with f in other Romance languages begin with h in Spanish (e.g., hijo-son, hilo-thread). The Moorish influence is seen in the many words beginning with al- (algodón-cotton, alfombra-rug, almohada-pillow, alfiler-pin). As in British and American English, there are differences in vocabulary on the two sides of the ocean (also in mainland Spain).

Spanish is spoken/used in the following countries: Argentina, Aruba (Dutch), Belize (British Honduras), Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), Gibraltar (U.K.), Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico (U.S.), Spain, St. Kitts (& Nevis) Independent, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U.S.).

Language Family
Family: Indo-European
Subgroup: Romance

Question and exclamation marks: In Spanish there are opening question and exclamation marks, ¿ and ¡, which can appear right at the beginning or in the middle of a sentence.

Measurements: Metric are the only official measurements. Imperial measurements must be converted into metric. However, there are some instances of the use of inches, such as in screen sizes.

Time: Spain uses the 24-hour clock, i.e. 10.00 / 15.00.

Date: The format is 25/08/99 or 25-08-99. Spanish uses a decimal comma (3,7%), and a dot after 999 (16.000).

Gender: Spanish has masculine and feminine genders. The gender affects nouns, adjectives, demonstratives, possessives and articles, but not verbs, e.g. Está cansada (She’s tired), Está cansado (He’s tired).

Plurals: Generally speaking, the plural is formed by adding ‘s’ to words ending in a vowel and by adding ‘-os’ or ‘-es’ to words ending in a consonant. This is however, governed by a set of rules.

One letter words: One letter words include: a, e (replaces ‘y’ (= and) before a word beginning with ‘i’), o, u (replaces ‘o’ (= or) before a word beginning with an ‘o’).

Capitalization: Occurs at the beginning of sentences and for proper names. Unlike English, days of the week/months of the year/languages/nationalities/managerial posts like gerente general, do not take a capital letter.

Double consonants: The only groups of two equal consonants are the following: cc, ll, nn, rr.

End-of-line hyphenation: With regard to end-of-line hyphenation, it is best to leave words whole in normal text and leave hyphenation for restricted text boxes, columns, etc. However, if absolutely necessary, a single consonant between two vowels joins the second. Hyphenation between two consonants applies. Examples: in-novador, ten-síon, ac-ceso. However, there are exceptions in the case of the following groups: pr, pl, br, bl, fr, fl, tr, dr, cr, cl, gr, rr, ll, ch (e.g., ca-ble, ma-cro, I-rracional). Between three consonants, the first two will go with the preceding vowel and the third with the following vowel (e.g., trans-por-te), except in the case of the aforementioned consonant groups, in which the first one will go with the preceding vowel and the third with the following vowel (e.g., im-presora, des-truir).

Avoid hyphenation: Between two vowels. When the result will appear rude (e.g., dis -puta, tor-pedo). It is advised that the last line in a paragraph contains more than four characters (punctuation marks included).

Tú and Usted: The familiar form of you is tú and verbs used with tú are conjugated in the 2nd person. The formal form of you is usted and verbs used with usted are conjugated in the 3rd person. The familiar form is used with friends or with people who are younger than you. The formal form is used when you speak Spanish with elders or people you don’t know.

Ser vs Estar: Two verbs in Spanish express “to be”: ser, and estar. In general, “ser” expresses permanent states, such as Soy alto (I am tall) or Somos de Argentina (We are from Argentina). Estar expresses temporary conditions, such as Estoy cansado (I am tired) or La calle está mojada (The street is wet).