Over 570 million people worldwide speak Spanish. Of those, 83% or 470 million are native speakers, and predictions by the Cervantes Institute say that over 750 million people will be speaking the language in the next decades.

Spanish continues to be the second-most spoken mother language – Mandarin leads with 950 million native speakers. In the upcoming decades, Spanish (as a %) will increase while Mandarin and English will remain the same. From this increase, United States will have the biggest population of Spanish speakers worldwide after Mexico as over 25% of its population is expected to be Hispanic.

Currently, United States has around 40 million native Spanish speakers and an additional 15 million people who have some Spanish knowledge. “It is very interesting how Spanish has grown in the US. By the middle of this century Spanish will break apart the English-only model,” said Juan Manuel Bonet, director of the Cervantes Institute.

Spanish is the most studied language at school and university level across the United States. The number of students learning Spanish is higher than the total sum of students enrolled in all other languages. In China, the interest has grown and the demand of Spanish courses has surge as there is a great economic interest in Latin America.

More than 21 million people are studying Spanish as a foreign language globally, competing with Mandarin and French as the second-most studied. What are you waiting for?

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