According to a report and analysis by the Cervantes Institute 9, almost 483 million people have Spanish as their mother tongue.
mother tongue. At the same time, the group of potential users of Spanish in the world (a figure that includes the Native Proficiency Group, the Limited Proficiency Group and the Limited Proficiency Group and the Foreign Language Learners Group) exceeds 580 million.
These are the first conclusions and data from the study carried out by the Cervantes institute. Let's see what more curiosities and characteristics stand out.
Data for Spanish (as a language)
- Spanish is the world's second mother tongue in terms of number of speakers, after Mandarin Chinese, and the third speakers, after Mandarin Chinese, and the third language in terms of global speakers (native speakers (native speaker + limited proficiency + learners of Spanish), after English and Chinese.
- For demographic reasons, the percentage of the world's population which Spanish as a native language is increasing, while the proportion of speakers of Chinese, English and
proportion of Chinese, English and French speakers is declining. - In 2019, 7.6% of the world's population is Spanish-speaking (those 580 million potential users of Spanish mentioned in the first line). Forecasts estimate that the weight of the Spanish-speaking community in 2050 will be Spanish-speaking community in 2050 will be slightly larger than it is today (7.7% of the world population). However, these forecasts also predict that, in 2100, this percentage will stand at 6.6%, mainly due to a decline in the population of Spanish-speaking countries. Spanish-speaking countries.
- In 2060, the United States will be the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico: almost one in three Americans will be Hispanic.
- Nearly 22 million students will be studying Spanish as a foreign language in 2019. Specifically 21,882,448.
There are sources that speak of the existence of some 7,000 languages around the world. Others put the number at between 6,000 and 10,000 languages, depending on the measurement criteria used. In any case, the majority of the world's inhabitants communicate in a small number of them. Some languages have a very large native population, such as Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, French and Spanish. Chinese, Spanish, Hindi and English. Spanish is the second most widely spoken native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese.
An analysis of the demographic evolution of the world's five most widely spoken languages - Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi and Arabic - between 1950 and 2050 shows that, in relative terms, the proportion of native speakers of Chinese and English is declining for reasons of global demographics.
Chinese and English is declining for reasons of global demographics.
In contrast, both Spanish and Hindi/Urdu are seeing a moderate but steady increase in the number of native speakers. moderate but steady increase in the number of speakers.
