Spanish, the second language on Facebook and Twitter
The latest data augur a promising future for Spanish, which is already the second language in the world with the most speakers and the second language of international communication. Currently, it has more than 495 million speakers, being the second most spoken language in the world after Chinese, contrasting the rise of Spanish against the decline of English and Chinese.
In addition, Spanish is the second language of international communication after English, which occupies the first place. The calculations indicate that this growth will be even greater in a few years. Thus, in 2030 it is expected that 7.5 percent of the world population will be Spanish-speaking (535 million people), a percentage only surpassed by Chinese and that will grow progressively. It is expected that within three or four generations, 10 percent of the world's population will be understood in Spanish, being the United States. the country with the largest volume of Spanish-speaking population in the world, ahead of Mexico.
The presence of Spanish on the Internet
This trend of Spanish growth has spread to the Internet, where it now occupies the third position as the most widely used language, after English and Chinese. The presence of Spanish on the Net has resulted in a growth of more than 800% in the last 10 years, increasing the distance with respect to Japanese, Portuguese or German.
Regarding the evolution of Spanish on the Web, the growth potential of users who use Spanish is still very high and it is expected to continue growing in the coming years.
Spanish has also become the second most used language in the two main social networks in the world, Facebook and Twitter, according to the latest data published by the Cervantes Institute on the current situation of Spanish.
Interest in studying Spanish grows
The rise of Spanish in recent years has increased in parallel the interest of people to study it. Currently, Spanish is the fourth most studied foreign language in the first cycle of Secondary in the countries of the EU (12.2% of European students are learning it), behind English, French and German. Thus, last year, the Instituto Cervantes recorded an 8 percent growth in the number of student enrollments in Spanish.
In addition, according to a report from the Eurostat statistical office, learning Spanish is what more has increased, since it has gone from 7.4 percent in 2005 to 12.2 percent in 2012, highlighting Sweden where 42.3% of its students in the first cycle of Secondary study Spanish as a foreign language, followed by France with 36 , 2%, of Portugal with 21.6% and Italy with 20.5%.
But nevertheless, English is still the most studied language among Spanish Secondary students: 98.1 percent of students study English as a foreign language, a percentage that has fallen slightly since 2005, when 98.4 percent of Secondary students studied English.
These latest data confirm the position that English was already the most studied language in 2012. Then, English was the most studied foreign language in the EU, with rates above 90 percent in almost all Member States, being Spain, Portugal and Latvia are the only ones in which the proportion of students studying English did not increase between 2005 and 2012.
Patricia Núñez de Arenas
