WHY LEARN SPANISH?

Learning Spanish will open all these possibilities up to you: Personal and professional development, increase of business opportunities, a rich cultural heritage and a beautiful scenery in all the countries of the Hispanic World.

If this is not enough, here are eight more reasons why you should learn Spanish:

• In terms of international languages, Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world, after English, with more than 500 million speakers across the world.

• In addition, Spanish is the second most widely studied language in four continents. 20 million people decide to take up Spanish every year and its demand has doubled in the past few years.

• Speaking Spanish will enable you to immerse yourself in the rich cultural offering available across 20 Spanish-speaking countries.

• The report "Languages for the future" of the British Council states that the demand for Spanish in all areas of human activity takes the first position compared to other languages.

• Spanish is easy to learn and speak and opens doors to learning other Latin languages, such as Portuguese, Italian, French and Romanian.

• Four G20 countries are Spanish speaking, making our language an essential tool for the business world.

• Spanish follows English as the second most prevalent language on the internet, social media and on websites of international organizations.

• Spain is official languages of international organizations, such as UN, EU, NATO, amongst others.

Put simply, learning Spanish will open the door to a whole new world in your life! The language of the Camino de Santiago, Cervantes, Federico García Lorca, Borges, Cortázar, García Márquez, Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa and a whole lot more.

Cultural awareness

Learning a new language goes far beyond learning words and basic grammar rules. It also opens up your world to a whole new culture. Enhanced cultural awareness provides for enriched interpersonal exchanges and experiences.

Cultural competence is key to thriving in the increasingly globalized world that we live in. It will help you to build relationships with people all across the world. More importantly, cultural awareness makes one more tolerable of other cultures. If you learn Spanish you will gain a better understanding of the Spanish culture, thus a better understanding of why they talk and act the way they do.

Cultural awareness also helps to make people less anxious in social interactions. The more experience an individual has with a language, the more comfortable the person is with the culture.

It takes travelling to a whole new level

As stated above, Spanish is the official language in 20 countries and across four continents. Just think about how much richer your travel experience will be if you can interact with the locals and integrate yourself deeply into the Spanish culture.

You can’t truly experience the local culture if you’re only exploring the tourist areas. But if you learn Spanish, you can leave behind the tourist hotspots and immerse yourself in the local culture. A deeper level of communication will help you to become more adventurous and enrich your travel experience.

Spanish is relatively easy to learn and is a gateway language

The Spanish pronunciation is simpler and consistent. It is a romance language. Most of its words come from Latin language, which makes Spanish words to share similar etymology with many other languages, including those of different origin.

Learning Spanish can give you a big head start if you’re interested in learning other “romance languages." For instance, a Spaniard and Italian can communicate with each other, even if they haven’t studied the other’s language.

If you learn Spanish you will find that you can understand a little bit of Portuguese, Italian, and French - especially in written form.

Learning Spanish could make your mind sharper

Learning Spanish, or any language for that matter, is great for keeping the mind sharp. Research suggests that learning a new language may subtly change, and even improve the way we think.

Learning a language is an effective mental workout that uses every form of memory that we have. Knowledge of more than one language has proven to improve attention, memory, and self-control. According to an article published in TIME magazine , multilingual brains are more nimble, quicker, better able to deal with ambiguities, and resolve conflicts.

Learning Spanish is not only fun, it’s also one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn and can be extremely beneficial in the business world. So, what are you waiting for? Get learning and take your global experience to the next level.

¹ How the brain benefits for being bilingual? Jeffrey Kluger. August 2013. Time Magazine. http://science.time.com/2013/07/18/how-the-brain-benefits-from-being-bilingual