Are you one of the 7.5% of the world who speaks Spanish? Language of Cervantes is growing fast, latest figures show

The global Spanish language standards entity, based in Madrid, revealed this week that as at the beginning of 2020, the national tongue of Spain and much of Latin America had a total of 585 million speakers.

They include those who have had to learn it, or whose main native language is not Spanish, as well as mother-tongue speakers – and, as has been the case for a very long time, the country with the most native Spanish speakers is the USA, a nation where it is not even the official language.

Of the 7.5% of the world's population who speak Spanish, a total of 489 million were born in a country where it is the official language, and the remaining 74 million are either learning it or are already fluent in it.

The latter covers those who have studied and learnt Spanish to a fluent level as well as those whose parents or grandparents are from a Spanish-speaking country but who, themselves, were born in a country where it is not the official tongue, and who have grown up using the language with their family.

Numbers are continuing to increase, says the Cervantes Institute, which says those learning or perfecting their existing knowledge of the language have multiplied by 60% in the last decade and by half a million in the last year, to a total of 22.4 million.

Nine in 10 people who are studying Spanish, either officially for a qualification such as a degree or Cervantes Institute exam, or informally for pleasure, for work or because they live in or have second homes in a Spanish-speaking country, are based in, or come from, the USA, Brazil and European Union countries.

Spanish is the second-most spoken native language on earth in terms of numbers after Mandarin Chinese and the most-spoken in terms of distribution or number of countries.

Around 20 years ago, it was the third-most spoken native tongue on earth after Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.

In terms of actual speakers, Spanish is the third-most used and Mandarin Chinese is the second, since English has the peculiarity of being the only language on the planet with more non-native than native speakers – even though it is the most-used tongue worldwide, it only comes third in numbers of mother-tongue users.

Overall, numbers of Spanish-speakers have risen by five million in a year.

By the year 2068, it is expected that 724 million people in the world – one in 10 of the current population – will be speaking Spanish either as a foreign language or a native tongue.

Coordinator of this year's Cervantes Institute report, David Fernández Vítores, says after the next 50 years or so, it is likely the numbers of Spanish-speakers will start to level off.

“It's a trend that has been gradually occurring for many years: The natural growth of Spanish-speaking countries is slowing down,” he says.

“The conclusion is that, if we want Spanish to continue to be an influential language, we cannot expect demographics alone to be a sufficient factor.

“One always talks about the 'law of third-generation immigrants'. For example, a grandchild of Italian immigrants in the USA no longer has any real desire to speak Italian, meaning the family language eventually dies out.

“At the moment, it's still quite possible that the grandchild of Hispanic immigrants in the USA will break this trend, because it seems third-generation Hispanic migrants are still interested in being able to converse in Spanish.

“There's already a critical mass: The USA has Spanish-language TV, music, information, news, and there's work for Spanish-speakers.”

In order for more people to be interested in a given language, 'the political world' needs to promote it, Fernández Vítores says.

“There are political decisions that could make this step easier – for example, we could start to place linguistic importance on what has long been called, in derogatory terms, 'Spanglish'.

“The birth of the internet has also helped with expansion of the use of Spanish – it's the third-most used language online, with 7.9% of internet users communicating in Spanish.”

At the moment, given that only one country out of the 27 speaks Spanish as a native language, it has very little representation in the European Union, although its relative weight has increased with the departure of the UK from the bloc.

This said, Spanish has overtaken French within the United Nations and is now its third-most frequently-used tongue.

The USA's demographic continues to help the Spanish language to grow, given that 18.7% of the population, or over 62 million residents, are of Hispanic origin – 71% of these use Spanish in their family environment and 94% of them identify as 'Hispanic'.

And 'Hispanic' is the ethnic minority that will be the most widely-represented during the forthcoming US general elections.

At all levels of education in the USA, Spanish is the most-studied language.

By the year 2060, although 27.5% of the US population will be of Hispanic origin, it will have dropped to second place in the ranking of countries with the most Spanish-speakers – México is set to overtake it within the next 40 years, due to its higher birth rate.

The significance of the language in the global economy remains stable – native Spanish-language countries account for 7% of the world's GDP – and Spanish is the second-most used language in the sciences, behind English.

Spanish is more significant still in the worlds of social sciences, humanities, media and medicine, although in other fields, and 'no differently from any other language' according to Fernández Vítores, it remains some way behind English.