Spanish Language

1. It’s the second most popular language in the world, and supposedly by 2050, it’ll be running equal with English. You may as well get ahead of the curve now.

2. Roughly 330 million people around the world are native Spanish speakers; traveling internationally will become so much easier.

3. Learn Spanish to improve your knowledge of your own language. Spanish is from the Romance language family of languages, its roots coming primarily from Latin, the language spoken by the Romans. As you might know, English, too has many words of Latin origin. Because of this, knowing Spanish helps speakers of English (as well as some other European languages) broaden their vocabulary in their native language

4. Learning a second language is excellent exercise for your brain. Some studies even suggest being actively bilingual helps reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

5. It’ll set you apart from the rest of our mostly monolingual population. Imagine how cool your friends will think you are when you can expertly order everyone’s Tapas and Sangria in Español?

6. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking community, only after Mexico and ahead of Spain, Colombia, and Argentina

7. It’s Not a Hard Language to Learn. Chinese requires learning tones. French is spelled funny. Arabic has a different alphabet. Spanish, on the other hand, is spelled phonetically and many of the words are similar to English

8. It’ll totally increase your career prospects. Adding the ability to speak a second language to your resume will send you right to the top of the candidates list.

9. Comfortably conversing in a second language automatically enhances your critical thinking skills.

10. Enjoy Spanish music, theatre, film and literature in their original Spanish forms. Understanding Spanish will also open up the world of Spanish theatre to you, allow you to read great works of literature such as Miguel de Cervantes´ Don Quixote in their original forms, and watch Spanish language films without all the distracting subtitles. If you learn Spanish it will allow you to simply enjoy the films in their natural language. Oscar-winning films in Spanish include: Belle époque (1993), All about My Mother (1999), The Sea Inside (2004) and Pan´s Labyrinth (2007). Famous Spanish-speaking actors include: Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek.

There is also lots of wonderful Spanish and Latin American music. Popular Spanish-speaking musical artists include: Cuban Gloria Estefan, Colombian Shakira, Spanish Julio Iglesias as well as his son Enrique Iglesias, Puerto Rican Ricky Martin, and American Jennifer Lopez. Don’t just limit yourself to this list; there are many websites online where you can listen to many different and exciting types of Spanish and Latin American music.