2023-10-31 11:07:31
This is clear from the report Spanish in the world 2023. Cervantes Institute Yearbook —focused in its 24th edition on languages for inclusion— presented this Monday at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid by its director, Luis García Montero, who said that “we have reasons for pride”, but this “cannot mean complacency”.
Of course, García Montero has clarified that “demography and the cultural prestige of being the language of Cervantes are not enough”, and that is why the commitment to science and technology “is fundamental”: “Making Spanish a language of science and technology (…), that science is communicated well in Spanish,” he added.
Likewise, another of the objectives – Carmen Pastor, the academic director of Cervantes has also added – is to bring Spanish to “regulated education”, and to ensure that second and third generation Spaniards “preserve their mother tongue (the language of heritage)» in countries where this language is not the official one.
Currently, almost 500 million people (499,947,796) have Spanish as their mother tongue (last year it exceeded 496 million), which represents 6.2% of the world’s population), and the total number of Potential users of Spanish are close to 600 million (students and people with skills).
Booming growth until 2071
The Cervantes Institute report – whose presentation was closed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares – provides positive data, such as that the number of Spanish speakers will continue to grow in the next five decades, although their relative weight will decrease “progressively.” from there to the end of the century.
Specifically, the number of potential users of Spanish will continue to increase in absolute terms until 2071, the year in which it will exceed 718 million people, with different degrees of mastery of the language. That year represents the peak of this trend throughout this century.
But starting in 2071, it is expected that the number of Spanish speakers will progressively reduce to reach 693 million at the end of the 21st century.
Thus, looking to the future, in 2060 the United States will be the second Spanish-speaking country in the world (only preceded by Mexico), with 111 million people.
Regarding Spanish as a language of study, currently more than 23 million students study Spanish as a foreign language (specifically, 23,035,198), almost 700,000 less than last year, although it is estimated that there is a considerable number of students not counted, especially in private education centers.
Among these, 80% are distributed between the United States, the European Union and Brazil, and outside of these three spaces, the United Kingdom stands out, with a constant growth of students (due, among other things, to Brexit), and some countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in those where French is an official or co-official language.
Spanish in institutions
In the European environment, 76 million are able to communicate in Spanish with varying degrees of proficiency in the language; and the language of Cervantes is the fourth in the EU by number of native speakers (after German, Italian and French).
Likewise, in 19 of the 27 EU member states, Spanish is the language that their citizens “would most like” to learn as a second foreign language.
As for the United States, the report explains, more than 62.5 million Americans (18.9% of the total population) are of Hispanic origin, and 67.6% of them use Spanish in their family environment.
Only a fifth of North American students (19.7%) study a foreign language, so the growth potential that Spanish has is “very large.”
Spanish in science and the internet
After English, Spanish is the second language in which the most scientific documents are published. In 2022, only 1.3% of articles appearing in the Web of Science database were written in Spanish, while 94% used English.
Of course, 57% of scientific production in the Spanish-speaking field is currently carried out in Spain, far ahead of the second country, Mexico, with 14%.
In contrast to the situation of Spanish in the scientific field, the presence of our language on the Internet reflects that it is the third most used language on the web after English and Chinese.
Spanish is the second most used language on digital platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, LinkedIn, Wikipedia or Instagram, among others.
The number of Spanish-speaking Internet users has increased considerably in the first two decades of the 21st century; Only in Latin America and the Caribbean said increase was 2,858%.
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