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Spain
Spain is a nexus between different cultures (European, Mediterranean, Latin, Arabic, Africans ...), is the natural bridge between the
European Union and Latin American and
USA (40 million native Spanish speakers). Spain is a multicultural country open to other cultures. About
Spain and Catalonia.
 The world is becoming more and more globally and therefore speaking a foreign language has never been as important as it is today. To better understand why Spanish is such an important and useful language let's look at some facts. Spanish is spoken by more than 500 million people worldwide and is official language in 21 countries, with over 330 million native speakers. In USA alone there are more than
40 million native Spanish speakers and the number is still increasing. Spanish is an official language in many international organizations (i.e. United Nations, GATT, etc.) and is widely used in the world of art and tourism.
- Spoken by 500 million people
- 3 language of the world (number of people)
- 3 language of the world (number of countries where it is official language). Spanish is the mother tongue of approximately 350 million people in
21 countries
- More than 40 million students of Spanish in the world
- Spanish is the second most used language in international communication.
- The Hispanic population in the United States has grown by 60 per cent in just one decade. At present there are
40 million Hispanics, representing 12,5 per cent of the total population.
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Why Study Spanish?
By learning Spanish you will be able to better understand the Spanish/ Latin American
cultures, which has made some of the greatest contributions to the world of art and literature. Just to mention a few famous artist there are Goya, Picasso, Miró and Dali and authors like Cervantes, Garcia Marques and Isabel Allende have made a great contribution to the world of literature. Further more the improvements in the Spanish and the South American economies in the last decades and the opening to the south of the American trading association (NAFTA) is making Spanish an even more important language in the world of business.
Spanish is a very beautiful language, romantic and "macho", with particular sounds that are still
manageable for most people. For many Americans, this is the first language they want to learn. For Europeans, it's more like the third or fourth. Nevertheless, if you already speak
English, the attraction of Spanish is very high, being understood in half a continent and many other places.
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Grammar:
Is, very easy to learn, at least for speakers of other romance languages. The language is a simple, logical system and occasions to practice it are quite widespread, so you should not have hard time learning.
- Phonemes. Most of them are simple, with the exception of the
"jota" and "rolled r". These are easy to master for most people, but it takes some times to be able to speak rapidly and precisely.
- Syntax. Very simple, especially if you already speak another romance language.
American readers must accept that verbs can change with tenses and persons, but once you get that the system is relatively regular.
- Vocabulary. Not especially simple if you don't already know another romance language. Nevertheless, vocabulary is pretty analytical if you look close enough and can be mastered quite fastly.
- Orthography. Very simple, totally logical: you write as you speak, you speak as you write, even for the accents.
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