What is happening to Spanish in the United States?

The United States Census Bureau has released data referring to the year 2022, from which it can be seen that one in five Americans is of Hispanic origin, which establishes that around 63 million Hispanics live in the United States of America, and the confluence of the varieties of Spanish and the transfer of coexistence with English is a new phenomenon, as announced by the researcher, David Fernández of the Franklin Institute during the presentation of the book: " The Language of the United Hispanics of America" by the writer, Francisco Moreno Fernández, recently in Madrid.

Spanish on this continent is a reality and an important fact. For the last seven years, there have been more Latinos born in the USA than those arriving from abroad. "We have to accept that the emergence of a new model, the result of the varieties of Spanish in the USA, plus Anglicism as another component of the language (Spanglish), should be instrumentalised", says Francisco Moreno Fernández, Doctor in Hispanic Linguistics and sociologist, Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), during his speech at the Cervantes Institute to talk about his book, the " Language of the united Hispanics of America".

According to Francisco Moreno Fernández, the Iron Law of the disappearance in three generations of the languages of immigration is still not being fulfilled in the United States, because "here Spanish is much more than a language of immigrants". Thus, it is beginning to be seen as a positive thing to speak Spanish, a language that is well regarded and has added value. However, we can still allude to events such as the Grammy Awards ceremony, where the subtitles accompanying the songs of Costa Rican rapper Bad Bunny referred to "a language that is not English", which caused hilarity among language experts. 

Spanish is an indiscriminate language and Hispanic is the largest ethnic group eligible to vote. In reality, the weight of the Latino increases, but it should be noticed in politics, which makes iconic use of Spanish. We are talking about a mere electoral nod to comply with an ethnic group. It is striking that 20% of secondary school students choose Spanish as a foreign language but use textbooks by American authors, compatible with the use of a Mexican variant of Spanish. The truth is that Spanish in education in the United States is abysmally relevant in comparison with the rest of the languages taught.

Likewise, this honorary research professor at the University of Alcalá considers that the challenge lies in spoken language and written texts in the field of artificial intelligence. Thus, young people who use TikTok perceive that mobile phones are not well coded phonetically speaking.

The author of the aforementioned book, Moreno Fernández, at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, urged language experts to offer content and technology that meets the needs and interests of Spanish speakers in the US, otherwise "it will be a language that will tend to disappear if the formats are reduced and the generation of content does not attract greater attention". 

It is clear that the growth of the Spanish-speaking community and the resilience of Hispanics in the US are influencing the survival of the language. By acquiring a higher socio-cultural level, second and third generations want to recover the language, as a link with their families of origin, which is a factor in the maintenance of Spanish.

It is normal for lexical transfers from English to US Spanish to become another component of the languages in contact. In the last seven years, more Latinos have been born in the US than have arrived from abroad. More than 60% of Hispanics were born in America. The future of the Spanish language will depend on these new generations: it is possible to be Latino without speaking Spanish, while maintaining one's cultural and ethnic identity.

Carmen Chamorro, CIP and ACPE board of directors