El día E (día del español)

Today is June 20th, and the so called 'el día e'. El día del español, or the day of the Spanish language is celebrated all over the world with thousands of musical and cultural events, many of them organized by the Instituto Cervantes, the official institution which works hard to spread the Spanish language and culture throughout the world. 

So it's a good date to talk about this beautiful language, and I'd like to share with you some important numeric data:

• Spanish is spoken by over 500 million people around the world. It is the 2nd world language after Mandarin Chinese.
• According to the Instituto Cervantes, 21 million people study Spanish as a foreign language today, which is 1.5 million more people than last year. So, welcome to this huge club.
• The USA, Brasil and France are the top three countries in number of students of Spanish.
• By 2015, the USA will the first Spanish speaking country in the world in terms of number of speakers.
• Spanish is the second language on the Wikipedia.
• Spanish is the second language on the main social networks, facebook and twitter.
• Spanish is the third most used language on the Internet, with 8% of Internet communicating in Spanish.

If you are reading this post it is because you are also a potential Spanish speaker, so let me encourage you to go on with your learning experience, and welcome you to the big family of Spanish speakers in the world!