- Spanish-speaking people in United States ?
According to Cervantes Institute, «In 2050 the United States will be the first Spanish-speaking country in the world.» The growing official figure (54 million) of Hispanics is a reality that affects everyday life, business, politics and academia in United States.
Quoted by the Cervantes Institute, the article State of the Hispanic Consumer: The Hispanic Market Imperative (Nielsen, 2012) shows that the size of the Hispanic community is large enough to directly influence the content of the media.
The linguistics professor at the International University of Florida, Phillip Carter, supports the data indicating that Latinos are 80 percent of the people in Miami, 90 Doral and 95 in Hialleah. The famous city of Los Angeles, California (2.8 million inhabitants), is considered the largest number of Spanish speakers (60 percent), due to the Mexicans. In the state of Texas and Houston, there are over one million people communicating in Spanish.
Perhaps for that reason we will not get surprised by the next paragraph in Maria Torrens’ article United States no longer knows how to live without the Spanish: «If you take the subway from Manhattan to Astoria, at Queens, one will discover that English has disappeared. In the neighborhood, conversations, store signs and music coming out of houses and cars are held in Spanish. The same occurs in dozens of areas in New York (...)».
This explains why specialized institutions, such as the Cervantes Institute, have expanded their activities all over the country. The Cervantes Institute has branches in New York, Chicago, Albuquerque, Seattle and Boston, and will soon be installed in Washington; or the fact that the North American Academy of the Spanish Language has been integrated into the Association of Spanish Language Academies.