As a student of languages, I would always urge anyone to take up a second language. Not only

is it an enjoyable and fulfilling experience, it has also been proved to increase your brain 

capacity and memory. As an extremely passionate student of the Spanish language and 

Hispanic culture, I have been asked many times just why I enjoy it so much and why I believe it 

is such a good choice of language to learn.

Firstly, after Mandarin Chinese, Spanish is the second most natively spoken language in the 

world, being the national or an official language in 23 countries including Spain, Argentina, 

Mexico and Cuba, and is also a commonly spoken language in a number of other countries 

including the USA, Brazil and Italy, bringing the combined estimated total of Spanish speakers 

to around 500 million. Spanish is a major language in 3 continents, unlike Mandarin Chinese 

which is only widely spoken in China.

Many of the Spanish speaking countries have truly fascinating cultures making them wonderful 

places to visit. Learning the language will enable you to communicate with the locals, enriching 

the experience of a visit to almost all countries in Central and South America, some of the 

Caribbean Islands and Spain.

Spanish is considered one of the easiest languages to learn for native English speakers. This is 

because pronunciation rules are consistent. It is an almost phonetically perfect language; every 

letter of every word is pronounced and there are no silent letters. This also makes it much 

easier to spell Spanish words. As a romance language, the ability to speak Spanish makes the 

process of learning any other romance language, for example Portuguese and Romanian, much 

easier. 

It is also an extremely accessible language. In the last decade the amount of Spanish courses 

available has hugely increased, with lessons being offered in every level. There has also been an 

increase in the demand for the media to be delivered in Spanish; many websites, newspapers 

and magazines are now translated into Spanish, mainly due to the huge Hispanic population 

within the USA, greatly increasing the availability of resources useful to those people learning 

Spanish.

Many Spanish speaking countries are undergoing huge economic growth and so are attracting 

lots of interest from English speaking countries, meaning there are constantly exciting new job 

opportunities being made available to those who are bilingual in English and Spanish. So, if you 

are thinking of taking up a second language but are unsure which to choose, I would definitely 

recommend considering the numerous benefits of choosing Spanish. The wonderful new 

cultures that you can experience, it’s fairly simple grammar and phonetics, and it’s ability to 

open up thousands of job opportunities, are just a few of the advantages that cannot be 

ignored.