A few years ago, the findings of a study were released that set off a bit of an uproar in the United States. The study contended that as of July 1st, 2050, the United States will have more Spanish speakers than any other country in the world. More than Mexico, more than Colombia, more than Spain. The results have since been refuted, with some claiming that Spanish-speaking immigrants will have become “Anglicized” and others pointing out the fact that the study was conducted by the Cervantes Institute, a chain of Spanish language schools.

However a different study released by a somewhat more credible source, the EFE news agency, may come to many as even more surprising. By the year 2030, Spanish will have surpassed Hindi and English to become the second most spoken language in the world, trailing only Mandarin Chinese. This report predicts that the number of people in the world whose native language is Spanish will surge from 5.7% to 7.5%.

Will either of these forecasts hold true? Vamos a ver.

It is generally accepted that the Bible is the most widely translated book of all time. But what author has had the most work translated? Some will credit the Apostle Paul, who is believed to have penned many of the books in the Christian Bible. Others, including the Guiness Book of World Records, give that honor to another sort of “Holy man,” science fiction writer and founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard.

With 1,084 fiction and non-fiction (?) works under his belt, Hubbard also earned Guiness’s record for most published author and a third in 2009 for most audio books produced. His pieces, including the celebrated and controversial Dianetics, have been translated into 71 different languages.

As the father of Scientology, Hubbard was no stranger to controversy and despite claims that Scientology is a cult, Hubbard and his team of lawyers worked hard to promote the organization, eventually attracting the likes of celebrities such as John Travolta, Jason Lee and Tom Cruise.

So if the Bible is the Bible is the best-selling book of all time and the Guiness Book of World Records says that L. Ron Hubbard is the most translated author, can you guess what the second best-selling book of all time is? Nope, not Dianetics. It is the Guiness Book of World Records.

“Finnegan’s Wake” is a ballad from around 1850 and is in the traditional Irish folk song style. It is most famous for being the foundation of James Joyce’s masterpiece of the same name, in which the humorous resurrection of Tim Finnegan is symbolic of the never-ending cycle of life (a typical Celtic theme).

One important ingredient in the song is whiskey, which is the cause of both Finnegan’s death and rebirth. The name of this drink comes from the Gaelic uisce beatha (which sounds something like “ish-ke-baha” and means “the water of life.” The song tells the story of Tim Finnegan, a Dublin construction worker, who “fell from a ladder and broke his skull.” Friends and family host his wake, in which there is plenty of the “water of life,” fights and dance. After lots of drinking and in the midst of a fight, one of the mourners throws a bucket of whiskey at another. The whiskey misses its target and lands on the deceased Finnegan, drenching him. This is when Finnegan “wakes” up and curses them, asking if they thought he was dead.

The universal cycle of life is represented in a great number of Celtic symbols (the pictures show a ring with a Celtic design with no beginning or end. The ring itself is another symbol, as the circumference of the item goes on infinitely and is the reason couples exchange rings at marriage as a symbol of eternal love). This topic comes up again in Joyce’s work, who removes the apostrophe at the end of the song title and turns it into “Finnegans Wake,” as in the awaking of many Finnegans (members of the human race) who fall, wake and arise.

"The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?" -- John Rocker

Does the United States need a national language? Should federal documents and services (driver’s license exams, election ballots, etc.) be provided solely in English, no matter what language the recipient speaks?

English advocacy groups in the US, including English First, Speak English and Pro English, are once again pushing for a vote to make English the national language of the US. They contend that this law and its aftereffects will be the “push” immigrants need to fully assimilate into US culture.

Eliminating interpretation and translation services will supposedly save taxpayer dollars. Proponents of English First feel that denying basic services to those who don’t speak English will actually be beneficial to speakers of other languages and ultimately ease racial and cultural tensions.

One idea for forcing English on to people is Tennesee Councilman Eric Crafton’s plan to charge people who call 911 a dollar a minute for the use of an interpreter.

The UK Haringey council recently came under fire for unwarranted spending on its translation program after computer records showed that over one third of the translations it deemed necessary and spent tax money on were not read even once. With over fifty million pounds spent on translations annually, government officials began digging deeper into exactly where the money was going and their findings have caused a bit of a scandal in the UK.

Among the translations were a document for Gypsies translated into Polish and an FAQ on new secondary schools pamphlet translated into Turkish, Somali and Polish. Neither document was viewed once.

Community members spoke out against the waste, citing the fact that the money earmarked for the languages area, which totals over fifty million pounds annually, could have been spent on translating other documents into different languages or spent on ESL programs in London.

I’ve talked before about the list of glossaries that a friend of mine put together (and which I’m sure she’ll add to in the future). While going through these glossaries, I came across a couple of little grammar problems in Spanish that can be troublesome.

The first topic is the use of the personal pronoun “se“. www.elcastellano.org has a good list of the uses of this pronoun, along with some very clear examples of use. This list can be especially useful for non-native Spanish speakers who may have difficulties understanding these constructions. “Se puede” learn on this page.
Another topic that is generally easy for native speakers but trips up speakers of Spanish as a foreign language is the use of “que“. That same site ,elcastellano.org, has another area that talks about the different uses of the pronoun que (interrogative, exclamatory, relative) and the conjunction, letting you know which ones have an accent mark and which don’t. It also has a little bonus on “dequeísmo“, which is the ever-growing error (by both native speakers and others) of using “de” incorrectly. In order to avoid misusing the preposition, we often convince ourselves that de que is incorrect when it actually should go there.

To wrap up this summary of “mini-topics,” I also found this area that discusses common errors and questions on accent marks. Who hasn’t been unsure of whether or not to put an accent mark on “ti”, “éste”, “aún”…? Well, éste is a great site to find explanations and examples all together.