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Every April 23, Spanish Language Day is celebrated and more and more people join the celebration, which not only seeks promote linguistic and cultural diversity throughout the world, but commemorate the literary legacy of the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedrawho died on April 23, but in 1616.
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According to the Cervantes Institute Yearbook 2023, which compiles data on this language in the world, Spanish is the second mother tongue in the world by number of speakers, after Mandarin Chinese, since Almost 500 million people have Spanish as their mother tongue, that is, 6.2% of the world population.
Furthermore, they estimate that the number of Spanish speakers will continue to grow over the next five decades. In 2100, only 6.4% of the world’s population will be able to communicate in Spanish. And in 2060, the United States will be the second Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. 27.5% of the US population will be of Hispanic origin. Added to this is the fact that more than 23 million students will study Spanish as a foreign language in 2023.
With so many people speaking Spanish, and so many diverse countries that have this language as their native language, There is always a debate about who speaks it better or worse, but the answer is never absolute..
Spanish has been changing with geography and time. Each community, region or country develops its own codes and uses different words and expressions to communicate the same thing. In Medellín, for example, parlache emerged, which has spread to other regions of the country.
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Recently, Alejandro Torrealba, professor of Colombian origin who teaches Spanish at Liberty University in Virginia, United States, went viral on social networks when he tried to answer that question to his students.
“At least, from a rigorous and scientific approach, There is no country in which it can be said that the best Spanish is spoken. However, we can talk about individuals who speak or handle the language better than others, and that is due to personal training, knowledge of spelling, grammar,” said the professor.
So, despite the differences, speaking a language well or badly It does not depend so much on the country as on each person, on their training. Although it is clear that there are those who prefer some accents to others, but that does not define how well or how badly one speaks.
