Spanish Language in The United States

Spanish Language In The United States

The Spanish language is the second most used language in the United States. There are more Spanish speakers in the United States than there are speakers of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Hawaiian, and the Native American languages combined. According to the 2010 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by almost 37 million people aged five or older, a figure more than double that of 1990.

There are 45 million Hispanophones who speak Spanish as a first or second language, as well as six million Spanish language students, composing the largest national Spanish-speaking community outside of Mexico and making Spanish the Romance language and the Indo-European language with largest number of native speakers in the world. Roughly half of all U.S. Spanish speakers also speak English "very well", based on the self-assessment Census question respondents. The language came to the country since the 16th and 17th centuries with the arrival of Spanish colonists in areas that would later become the states of Florida, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and California. Also west of Louisiana Territory was Spanish between 1763 - 1800 (year of the French recovery of territory), after of Seven Years War. After of the incorporation of these states to the U.S. in first half of 19 century, the Spanish language was later reinforced by the acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898 and by later waves of the Hispanic emigration, basically from Hispanic America, to the United States beginning in the second half of 19th century until today. Due to its reasons, and the significant number of speakers, the Spanish language can be considered to be a national, although minority, language of the United States.