Con Acento Latino - Español para extranjeros

(February 18, 2008).- Spanish will be the second language of economic exchange in the world in the next decade and could exceed the number of English native speakers, according to a study presented in Madrid by Fundación Telefónica.

According to the study Spanish Economy. An introduction, this language multiplies by two to three times the market share of Spanish exports in the whole of Spanish-speaking countries, “a multiplier factor even greater than English in the Anglo-Saxon countries”.

This study of Fundación Telefónica, the first of 10 volumes that will be presented soon on the value of Spanish, also stresses that this language “multiplies by almost 2.5 the share of migrants coming from Spanish speaking countries”, which reduces the costs of integration.

Spanish, the third language in the world by number of speakers (399 million, 5% of the world population) behind Chinese and English, could overcome the latter in the first decade of the twenty-first century, according to the Atlas of Spanish in the world, part of the same study.

In the past eight years, “the number of native Spanish inhabitants grew by 8%”, being the fastest growing language of this kind of speakers, which represents very remarkable expectations of economic development.

According to the foundation, “Spanish, as well as the Hindi/Urdu, is experiencing a moderate but steady increase in the number of speakers”. Telefónica stressed as and advantage the cohesion among Spanish speakers in 22 countries, mostly contiguous, and with more than 90% of speakers inside them.

Source: AFP.