Spanish now world’s second-most spoken mother tongue: report

Spanish is the world’s second-most common mother tongue, with 500 million speakers, representing a quick growth that gives “reasons for pride” but “cannot mean complacency”, a new report by state-owned Instituto Cervantes revealed on Monday.

The report “Spanish in the World 2023-Instituto Cervantes Yearbook” was presented at the Cervantes Institute headquarters in Madrid.

“We have reasons to be proud, but this cannot mean complacency”, its director Luis García Montero warned on Monday, EFE reported.

“Demographics and the cultural prestige of being the language of (Miguel de) Cervantes (the author of Don Quixote) are not enough”, said García Montero

This is why the commitment to science and technology “is fundamental”, “to make Spanish a language of science and technology (…) that science is communicated well in Spanish”, he added.

Almost 500 million people currently have Spanish as their mother tongue, compared to 496 million last year. This now represents 6.2% of the world’s population; and the total number of potential users of Spanish is close to 600 million (students and people with skills), the report reads.

According to the report, the number of Spanish speakers will continue to grow over the next five decades, although its relative weight will decrease “progressively between now and the end of the century”, while the number of potential users of Spanish will continue to increase in absolute terms until 2071, when it will exceed 718 million people, with varying degrees of proficiency in the language. That year represents the peak of this trend throughout this century, the report reveals.

But from 2071 onwards, the number of Spanish speakers is expected to fall progressively to 693 million by the end of the 21st century.

Looking ahead, in 2060, the United States will be the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world (second only to Mexico), with 111 million people.

In Europe, 76 million people can communicate in Spanish with varying degrees of proficiency in the language, and the language of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) is the fourth in the EU in terms of number of native speakers (after German, Italian and French).

In 19 of the 27 EU member states, Spanish is the language EU citizens would most “like” to learn as a second foreign language.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)