There are more than 450 million native speakers of Spanish, making it second only to Chinese in terms of the most spoken languages in the world. English is just behind Spanish, with approximately 360 million native speakers. This shows the importance of the language, and in the following we are going to explain you reasons why you should start learning it.
Spanish is the official or national language of 21 countries. In the Americas, 418 million people speak it, and in the European Union, 8% of folks speak it as a first language, and 7% speak it as a second language. With knowing Spanish you will be able to explore beautiful latin countries and get a real insight into their culture.
By knowing Spanish you’ll gain access to the unparalleled world of rich Hispanic culture. Watching movies in their original language is more enjoyable than watching with subtitles. Furthermore, being able to speak Spanish may help you better enter the mind of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many others. The same extends to music of the greats, like Gloria Estefan, Celia Cruz and Tito Puente.
How long does it take to learn Spanish? That is entirely dependent on who you are, how you study and if you’ve studied it, or a similar language before. According to the American Council of Teaching Foreign Language (ACTFL), languages are divided into two classes:
Class I: Spanish, French, Portuguese, among others
Class IV: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean
The languages in Group I, which include Spanish, take 480 hours of professional curriculum to achieve mid-advanced fluency. It’s important to remember here that how one defines “fluency” is entirely subjective. Some people say they’re fluent in a language if they can read and write without a dictionary. Others claim that true fluency is impossible because it’d take a lifetime to understand all of the cultural differences if you didn’t grow up in it. Either way, Spanish is widely regarded as one of the easiest languages to learn, so you can be up and running with basic reading and speaking skills in no time.
This page was built by Luisa