Spanish Classes In U.S. Growing

A recent survey by the Modern Language Association found that Spanish is the most-studied language in colleges in the United States. About 850,000 students take Spanish, compared to 210,000 in French, 198,000 in German, 92,000 American Sign Language, 74,000 Japanese and 61,000 Chinese.

This comes down to about 50% of college students studying Spanish, kind of incredible considering how much hatred has been directed at Latinos during the recent election cycles.

According to this report, the reasons for this growth include that Spanish opens up job opportunities, that other language programs are being cut during the recession and millions of people here already speak Spanish. About 34 million people in the U.S. are Spanish speakers — including 3.5 million people who aren’t Latino.