Spanish Now Second-Most Studied Language

The French like to claim that French is the second-most taught language in the world, and this might have been true a while ago. However, some now contend that Spanish has taken up that position due to both the rise of Spanish and the decline of French:

According to Spain's 20 Minutos, there are now more than 14 million people studying Spanish in 90 countries in which Spanish is not an official language. According to the Director of the Instituto Cervantes -- the Spanish organization that looks to promote the language all over the world -- one of the main reasons that people are choosing to study Spanish is because they believe that it willprofessionally benefit them in today's global economy. He also pointed to Brazil's decision to make Spanish an mandatory subject in schools as an example of the growing importance of Spanish in the world. There are currently one million Spanish speakers in Brazil butMolina estimates that in 10 years there will be more than 30 million Spanish-speaking Brazilians, adding to the already 500 million Spanish speakers in America and Spain, making it the fourth most spoken language in the world, after Chinese, English and Hindi. Brazil's new Spanish initiative will call for 210,000 Spanish teachers to teach the language. Molina, speaking at a language school conference in Coruña, Spain, also said that the United States -- currently with (according to his estimate) 36 million Spanish speakers -- is the frontier that must be conquered, calling it "a decisive platform for Spanish to reaffirm its role as the second language of international communication."

2007/04/27

http://vivirlatino.com/2007/04/27/spanish-second-most-studied-language-worldwide.php

Spanish Eclipsing French in Eastern Europe and Morocco

The French knew it would be an uphill battle for their language in Eastern Europe when the EU was enlarged to include countries such as Poland or Cyprus. Whereas French had hardly recovered any of its prewar influence since the fall of the Iron Curtain, English was already far ahead in 2002 as a lingua franca from Tallinn to Nikosia. But who would have thought then that Spanish itself would leave the Gallic tongue in its wake in the new, unconquered polyglot markets of Eastern Europe? The rise in interest for Spanish in Morocco is even more of a humiliation for French culture nationalists.    

Spanish on the rise in Eastern Europe

Thursday July 3, 2003

Looking for a place to practice your Spanish? Think Eastern Europe. According to a report issued this week by the Instituto Cervantes, Spanish is growing in popularity among students in places such as Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The interest in Spanish is most spectacular in Poland, where the number of people studying the language is up 158.5 percent in the past four years. The report also mentioned Morocco, where Spanish has risen to second place in foreign languages studied, behind English.

 Instituto Cervantes says that the typical student studying Spanish in Eastern Europe is a female between 17 and 25 years of age, most often choosing Spanish for personal reasons such as interest in tourism, culture or romance. The situation is different in Morocco, however, where Spanish is frequently studied as a means to obtaining employment.
  
Articles (in Spanish) on the report can be found in today's editions of at least two Madrid newspapers, La Rioja and El Periódico.

http://spanish.about.com/b/2003/07/03/spanish-on-the-rise-in-eastern-europe.htm

The Decline of a Cultural icon

In The Decline of a Cultural Icon: France in American Perspective, by Bertram M. Gordon, Copyright © 1999:

Recent reports from both Britain and the United States show a decline in French language classes. Richard Needham, trade minister of Britain, in May 1995 stated that schools in the United Kingdom did a disservice to Britain’s students by teaching French instead of Spanish, when growing business opportunities in Latin America called for training in the latter language. According to Needham, “French is a difficult language and it’s not a language of world business. Spanish is easier and it’s a gateway into French anyway.”¹ A BBC study published three years later showed French language classes with a 5 percent lead over Spanish for adult education students, a decrease from the 18 percent lead a year earlier. The reason given for this was the jump in British tourism to Spain.² Twenty-five years ago Spanish overtook French as the most popular second language taught in U.S. schools; university enrollment in French courses dropped about 38 percent between 1968 and 1990, while Spanish rose 46 percent. By 1990, according to the Modern Language Association, 534,000 U.S. college students were studying Spanish, twice the number of those studying French. Gladys Lipton, president of the American Association of Teachers of French, reported a 25 percent decline in French studies at the U.S. university level between 1993 and 1998.³
(...)
Symbolically, de Gaulle’s death in 1970 marked the closing of an era of French iconicity in America. The last wave appears to have corresponded to the gastronomy peak in the 1970s. Since then, study of the French language in the United States has declined. An Alta Vista search on the Internet in 1998 showed English with about 77 percent of the listings by language. Japanese was about 7 percent. German, followed by French and Spanish, were all pegged at between 2 and 3 percent. Adding the French minitel to these figures, it might not be unreasonable to estimate the French proportion at roughly 5 or 6 percent—in other words, similar in proportion to the Japanese.⁸⁸

(...)

1. Paul Marston, “Minister Urges Schools to Teach Spanish Not French,” Electronic Telegraph, 18 May 1995, Home News, http://www.telegraph.co.uk.

2. David Millward, “Spanish to Overtake French in Classroom,” Electronic Telegraph, 21 Sept. 1998.

3. James Brooke, “North Dakota, with German Roots, Adopts Spanish as Second Language,” New York Times, 2 Mar. 1996, 6. See also Merri Rosenberg, “Teachers Try to Renew Interest in French,” New York Times, “Westchester,” 25 Oct. 1998, sec. 14, 14.

(...)

88. Internet search on “language/nationality” retrieved on 2 Oct. 1998 using the Alta Vista search engine.