Spanish today and its future
Spanish in figures
- According to a report carried out by Instituto Cervantes in 2014, it is stimated that almost 470 millions of people speak Spanish as native language and if we include students, the figure will amount to 548 millions.
- Spanish is, after Mandarin, the second native language in the world by number of speakers.
- It is thought that within 4 or 5 generations, the 10% of the world population will communicate in Spanish.
- Almost 20 millions of students study Spanish as a second language.
The future of Spanish
The closing conference of the VI Latinamerican Congress of Translation and Interpetation [VI Congreso Latinoamericano de Traducción e Interpretación] held in Buenos Aires in May 2016, to which we had the privilege to attend, was dedicated to this language and entitled «The Spanish Language». The meeting was lead by José Luis Moure, president of Academia Argentina de Letras; Alicia Zorrilla, vicepresident of that institution; Antonio Martín, founder of Unión de Correctores de España; Joaquín Müller-Thyssen, CEO of Fundación del Español Urgente (Fundéu BBVA), y Miguel Sáenz, renown translator.
José Luis Moure predicts a «promising future» for the language although the experts also warn about the obstacles that may pose social networks, the different language varieties, the influence of other languages over Spanish.
Alicia Zorrilla assures that «the future of language is magnificent because Spanish is a language that is loved more every day» although we have to «fight in order not to be eaten by foreign languages». Regarding the Spanish varieties, she expresses that «it is important to preserve la unity of syntax. Each country has its own lexis and form. We must take care of syntax in order to understand each other» and she warns about the misuse and the mistakes in social networks.
On the other side, regarding the dominant influx of other languages, Antonio Martín holds that «language is pure evolution, a continuous evolution where it is mixes with other strate languages which add value, create expressions and make it change».
To sum up, in a recent article published in Clarín, Alicia Zorrilla comments that «Spanish is not improverished and will never be; it grows every day. “To empoverish” meand to decline, worsen. A language spoken by more the 500 million speakers and which has been enriched by the norms of each of the Spanish speaking countries could not have declined.»