A new study shows that there are more American college students in Spanish courses than any other foreign language.

The survey published by the U.S. Modern Language Association (MLA) shows that despite the anti-immigrant movement of recent years and the increase in the number of university students who enroll in Arabic, Chinese and Korean courses, Spanish remains by far the most studied language in universities.

Spanish is still the No. 1 foreign language. Nearly 50% of university enrollment for foreign language courses focuses on Spanish lessons.

About 850,000 students are enrolled in Spanish courses, followed by 210,000 in French, 198,000 in German, 74,000 in Japanese and 61,000 in Chinese.

Everything indicates that this trend will continue, for reasons that go beyond the existence of a huge U.S. Hispanic population. Students of all ethnic groups choose Spanish as a language because it opens up employment opportunities. Furthermore, in a time of budget cuts it is more likely that universities remove language courses with less assistance, but preserve the Spanish language.

In the U.S., about 34 million people speak Spanish, including 3.5 million who are Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau. That makes the United States the major Spanish-speaking country of the world.

But will the trend continue? Will new generations keep using their language in times when several states are considering anti-immigration measures and when the financial crisis is slowing the flow of Latin American immigration?

There is reason to think so. A nationwide survey conducted by Bendixen and Amandi, a public research firm, reveals that 89% of young foreign-born and 59% U.S.-born Hispanics speak English and Spanish.

It is a new phenomenon. Unlike what happened decades ago when parents would ask their children not to speak Spanish because they believed that they would progress more if they only spoke English, now Mexican immigrants want their children to be bilingual.

Besides bilingualism is now considered an advantage for employment. Also, technology keeps the immigrants and their children closer to their home countries. Technology has been a key factor; thanks to the Internet the U.S. is becoming more of a multi-ethnic society.

Hispanics already constitute the largest minority in the United States, and the technology will help the Spanish force in the country grow in the near future.

“There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.”

- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ch. 27

This quote from the famous novel by Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, gives us two powerful discussion topics. Let us leave aside the more philosophical and theological, even anthropological, line of thought resulting from the comparison between cultural tools, such as language, and the virtues of religion. We will only focus on the statement as it relates to the richness of language.

Reading between the lines, I would like to think that the famous writer, with some envy, mostly describes the abundance of colloquial vocabulary. It is in Pilar, Pablo’s lover, the leader of the gang, and the true leader of the low-spirited commando group, where Hemingway found the opportunity to admire the richness of the Spanish language. The writer painstakingly tries to reproduce the superior ability of insult he found in a language he so admired after years of living in Spain. What is striking is that he tries to personify it as a woman, which also suggests his desire to magnify the subject.

The richness of the Spanish language makes the famous Mexican author Carlos Fuentes expresses that “Perhaps Spanish is not competitive in science, but in literature and other disciplines it is clearly a growing force; a proven presence and a probable future.” This also leads to a Spanish “…embedded in the depths of the North American society, whether in culture, gastronomy or love.”

Those looking to translate their content into Spanish must take into account this “creativity” potential that the language provides. This not only helps the translated text look more “colorfully descriptive” from a literary standpoint. It also helps to accept the necessary tedious expansion of content, which must be properly “internationalized” beforehand (another matter to be discussed in a different article.)

Although English is the official language in the Philippines, Spanish is still perceived as an elite language for its historical and cultural importance, much more than English. In fact, Mestizo families and young students continued to use Spanish, especially in the provinces of Cebu, Zamboanga and Bacolod.

This is consequence of the Spanish roots left in the Filipino language throughout the colonial period, from 1565, when the Spanish language was first introduced, up to the beginning of the twentieth century, when American hegemony started. In 1990 there were about 2,658 Spanish speakers in the country. This number does not include the 300,000 natives who speak Chavacano, one of the 170 languages of the Philippines and the most similar one to Spanish.

Currently in the Philippines there are many borrowings from Spanish. Because of the cultural basis and for historical reasons, the country supports the use of Spanish in the legal documents and in court. Moreover, today, the importance of Spanish in this country has grown due to the demand of call centers. Spanish is not the official language since 1973, and since the 1987 is no longer a compulsory subject in schools.

Despite the fact that the historical and cultural base of Spanish spoken in the Philippines is of Mexican origin (the Philippines was a Spanish colony administered by Mexico), today the country is trying to promote pure Castilian. There are more than 10,000 Spanish words in different dialects of the Philippines. These are mostly words and loans from Old Castilian and Creole mixes. The most interesting aspect is the existence of false friends, which are words used in the Filipino language, which by their phonetic or graphic could be confused with Spanish words, but in reality are in Filipino, have an entirely different another meaning.

I recently wrote about the growing Spanish market in the United States and prior to that I discussed the intent of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE) to improve Spanish use in this country. I also commented on the mix of English with other languages spoken in the film “Code 46“, which was a good foreshadowing, in my opinion, of the future. And, in passing, I mention the existence of Spanglish, but never stopped to analyze …

What is Spanglish, really?

A common thing in Spanglish is to confuse the meaning between Spanish and English words that sound alike (false friends). An example of this would be the phrase ” vacunar la carpeta” (in English: “vacuum the carpet”) instead of “aspirar/pasar la aspiradora a la alfombra”. Another example of this type of speech would be a sentence in which both languages are used: I’m sorry I cannot attend next week’s meeting porque tengo una obligación de negocios en Boston, pero espero que I’ll be back for the meeting the week after.

The current population is estimated to be 6 million. However, the United Nations expects this number to increase to 90 million by the year 2025. And the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion in 2050.

According to UNESCO data, there are approximately 400 to 500 million Spanish speaking people in the world. The Spanish language is used by 7-8% of the world’s population, although that figure will increase significantly.  These figures account for the population of countries with Spanish as their official language, including 30 million people in the United States who speak Spanish on a regular basis. Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the United States and Spanish ranks second as the language spoken most widely at home.

These numbers clearly indicate a tremendous growth in the demand of Spanish media communication, information, entertainment, websites and so on.  Companies are starting to realize that translating their websites into Spanish is a must if they are reach a consumer market that continues to increase at a significant rate. Although most Hispanics live in big cities, states such as Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North and South Carolina and Virginia are experiencing larger migration.

Communication media tries to meet market demand by offering quality Spanish programming, as the Spanish media and publicity market in television, newspapers and magazines published in Spanish continues to grow. However, the demand is not only for Spanish content but for quality Spanish content, i.e well translated material.

I have already mentioned that there is no single form of Spanish. Each target market should be considered when a products being launched into the Spanish language (Mexican, Columbian, US Spanish), Latin American Spanish in general (or what we call “neutral Spanish”) or Spanish from Spain. By taking into account this information, a good translation service can deliver a good quality product specific to each customer and thus provide the Hispanic market in the United States with the translations needed. Follow the links to find general information about the Spanish translation for the United States, specifically the online Hispanic market or Hispanic market research.

Source: Mercado de español en los Estados Unidos

The Royal Spanish Academy and the Association of Spanish Language Academies present a New Grammar for Spanish Language. This is the first time the academy produces a grammar book since 1931.The two volumes, and a third one being published soon, is a result of eleven year of work from the twenty-two academies of Spanish Language. The new grammar books seeks to unify Spanish language. This is the first time the grammar at an academic level covers all varieties of Spanish Language.

Spanish is the second most-common language in the United States. There are 45 million Hispanics who speak Spanish in the United States, making it the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking community. German, Italian, Polish, Russian and Greek are also spoken among older generations of immigrants. Also spoken are Tagalog, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. And let’s not forget that there is also a small population of Native Americans who still speak their native languages.

However, it may surprise you to learn that the United States does not have an official language, even though the majority of the population speaks English. According to an ACLU briefing paper, the proposal was “rejected as undemocratic and a threat to individual liberty” by the Continental Congress. Needless to say, the proposal of any official language in the United States is simply out of the questions.

To wrap up my previous post, I’d like to make a brief comment on this subject.

A translation targeted towards different Spanish speaking regions or countries should be translated into “Neutral Spanish”. As I mentioned before, it’s very important that the client be aware of this. What we’re talking about is a standardized version of Spanish, especially in terms of vocabulary, so that all Spanish speakers can understand its meaning. We already established that there is only one Spanish language, but it’s spoken differently throughout the world. Grammar -the syntax itself will be basically the same regardless of any variations. But the choice of certain terms and idioms (phrases, loanwords, sayings, idiomatic phrases, etc.) will need to be adapted in order to reach a middle ground. The use of the RAE Spanish dictionary (Royal Spanish Academy) is essential. This is the bible and guide for translators in search of what Wikipedia defines as “a version that tries to avoid terms that may be identified with specific countries (“ordenador” is most used in Spain while “computadora” in turn is used in America) or linguistic regional phenomena (the Latin American voseo)…”.