Spanish exceeds 600 million speakers for the first time and repeats as a second mother tongue in the world

The Spanish speakers have surpassed 600 million people worldwide for the first time in 2024 (600,607,806 people), with almost 500 million native speakers, and continues as the second mother tongue in the world, after Mandarin Chinese, according to data from the report ‘Spanish in the world 2023’from the yearbook presented by the Cervantes Institute this Wednesday in Madrid.

In 2024, for the first time in history, Spanish speakers will exceed the figure of 600 million (600,607,806 people) worldwide, adding people with native proficiency (almost 500 million) along with those with limited competence (close to of 78 million) and the students (more than 24 million), according to the director of the Institute, Luis García Montero.

“Many times our work is sad, but presenting this data makes today’s morning happy. This yearbook highlights two things and that is that a fundamental part is dedicated to culture. Many things fit into words and cultural values ​​encompass many things. Following the instructions of our specialists seems very important when evaluating uniting high culture with popular culture. We are the language of Cervantes but also the language of a very notable part of the offer of music, series, movies and video games“, García Montero celebrated.

The 600 million people who speak Spanish turn the language into the second mother tongue on the planet, behind Mandarin Chinese, and above EnglishHindi and Arabic. However, the number of countries in which Spanish is official, vehicular or majority is less than the number of countries that speak English, French or Arabic.

In this sense, the index of vehicularity of Spanish as a second language is the lowest of the official UN languages, while the coefficient of speakers of Spanish as a first language is among the highest.

The report reveals that Spanish speakers outside Hispanic countries are approaching 100 millionmainly due to their migratory background.

Regarding learners, the document points out that the majority of people who learn Spanish are concentrated in the United States, the European Union and Brazil, due to the weight of the language in formal education systems. In 2024, there will be more than 24 million (24,208,813 people) people learning Spanish.

In this regard, the report points out that, Over the last ten years, the number of Spanish learners has grown at an average rate of two percentdriven by its dynamism in countries of the European Union and West and Central Africa.

SPANISH AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES

In Spanish-speaking countries, the proportion of speakers with native Spanish proficiency is 93.63 percent of the population. Among Spanish-speaking countries, only Paraguay, Guatemala, Bolivia and Equatorial Guinea have a proportion of native Spanish speakers below 85 percent.

Ecuador, Venezuela and Guatemala are the Spanish-speaking countries with the lowest records in terms of Spanish proficiency among their indigenous population, with more than 20 percent of people who do not speak this language (in the case of Ecuador, the percentage reaches 34.2% indigenous population).

SPANISH IN AUDIOVISUAL, MUSIC AND LITERATURE

On the other hand, the report highlights that Spanish has established itself as one of the main options for users of platforms, such as Netflix or Spotify, and also for video game consumers.

So, Spain is the fifth producer of series among the 100 most viewed on Netflix in the world. And it is, along with the United Kingdom, the largest producer of fiction series in Europe. In 2024, ‘The Snow Society’by Juan Antonio Bayona, ranks second among the most viewed non-English speaking films in the history of Netflix, with 94.4 million views. Third place goes to another Spanish film, ‘Nowhere’by Albert Pintó, with 85.7 million views.

In the music sector, Spanish music consumption has increased by 3.8 percent, exactly the same percentage that English has decreased. In 2023, about a quarter of the songs on the charts of portals such as YouTube or Spotify used Spanish.

Precisely, the professor at the University of Oviedo Eduardo Viñuela, in charge of the report ‘Spanish is sung more than ever’has assured that the current moment is “very good” for music in Spanish, which is growing “uninterruptedly.” Thus, he highlighted the “Latin boom” of the 2000s with exponents such as Shakira, Luis Fonsi or Daddy Yankee.

Afterwards, in In the era of TikTok, music in Spanish has continued to have a great presence on social networks, making ‘amateur’ creations widespread.which have skyrocketed consumption data with milestones such as the case of the artist Bad Bunny or Karol G, who have reached first place on the Billboard list with music in Spanish, something that was not “common.”

“Many of the non-Spanish speakers who come to this music do so thanks to audiovisual media, successful series or films in which these songs appear.. Through music in Spanish, a lot of emphasis is placed on the different accents of the language. If at the beginning of the 2000s only artists with neutral Spanish were successful, now Aceto is very present and artists like Rosalía, J Balvin or Bad Bunny use it as their sign. This generates links with Spanish-speaking communities and with young people, through trap, reggaeton or dancehall,” said Viñuela.

In the field of translation, the Spanish language is in 6th place among translated languages, but among the 50 most translated authors worldwide, only one Spanish-speaking writer appears, Gabriel García Márquez, in 49th place with 1,382 translations. The most translated author is Agatha Christie with 7,236 translations.