US has more Spanish speaking people than Spain, reveals new study

The US is now home to more Spanish speakers than Spain itself, making it the world’s second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. [caption id=“attachment_2326190” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] According to a new study published by Instituto Cervantes, an institute which promotes Spanish, there are 41 million native Spanish speakers in the US, according to The Guardian. Moreover, there are a further 11.6 million people who are bilingual, mainly the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants. This brings the total number of Spanish-speaking people in the US to 52.6 million, which greater than that in Columbia (48 million) and Spain (46 million). The world’s largest Spanish-speaking population resides in Mexico (121 million). The US Census Office has even estimated in the report that by 2050, the US, with 138 million Spanish speakers, will have the largest number of Spanish-speaking people in the world. The report also found that Spanish is the third most used language on the internet after Chinese and English, and second after English on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, according to CNN. By 2015, 6.7 percent of the global population will speak Spanish, surpassing the 2.2 percent who speak Russian and the 1.1 percent fluent in French. Currently, there are 559 million Spanish speakers in the world.