Spanish and French compete to be second foreign language in Italy after English

The Diplomat Spanish in Italy “maintains a strength in cultural values” compared to English and “disputes” with French the “primacy” as the second most spoken foreign language, according to the fifth volume on demolinguistics of the collection ‘Spanish in Europe’, a research proposal by the Center for Ibero-American Studies of the University of Heidelberg, the University of Zurich and the Instituto Cervantes. This collection investigates and disseminates the presence of Spanish on the European continent and, to date, volumes have appeared dedicated to the demolinguistics of Spanish in Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and a joint volume dedicated to Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova. In the case of this new publication, «Demolinguistics of Spanish in Italy», the situation of this language in Italy is analyzed, with an annex referring to the situation of the language in Malta, San Marino and Vatican City. The Secretary General of the Instituto Cervantes, Carmen Noguero Galilea, participated in the presentation of the study —held on Wednesday at the central headquarters of the Insttituto Cervantes in Madrid—. Milin Bonomi and Maria Vittoria Calvi, researchers from the University of Milan and co-authors of the volume; Francisco Moreno, director of the Global Observatory of Spanish, and Carmen Pastor, Academic Director of the institution, also participated in the presentation. The study shows that Spanish is a language known or used (among native speakers, speakers with limited competence and learners) by some 3,957,635 inhabitants of Italy, a figure corresponding to 6.6% of the total population, although all the data presented in this study are framed in the academic year 2019/2020, the date agreed as the limit for this collection of comparative studies. With these data, Spanish disputes French for primacy as the most spoken language in Italy after the national language, Italian, and English, since other important languages of immigration in the country, such as Chinese, Arabic or Romanian, do not have such high numbers of learners. While French remains one of the most widely known languages among older people, the study highlights that English is consolidating its position as the dominant language in international labour and scientific relations. However, the study indicates that Spanish “maintains its strength in the domains related to cultural values” and “its possible validity as a language for global communication cannot be ruled out, although this aspect is more difficult to estimate.” So far this century, Spanish has grown in Italy as a language learned and, at the same time, has become one of the main languages of immigration, “gaining visibility in many areas.” Thus, from 2003 to 2020, Spanish-speaking immigration doubled (from 123,703 to 324,179 people) and the number of Spanish learners in secondary education multiplied by twelve (from 70,382 to 837,290 students). The increase in learners is due “both to the attraction exerted by this language and to the measures in favor of languages in the Italian educational system.” The volume specifies that a large part of Italian Spanish speakers reside in Spanish-speaking countries: 496,107 people, who represent 12% of Spanish users in Italy (and at least 128,988 of them have a native command of Spanish). In addition, Spain has become a priority destination for Italian migration in this decade under analysis, since the number of Italians residing in Spain multiplied tenfold between 2011 and 2020, going from 21,000 to 203,268 people. The key factors in these flows are both linguistic, cultural and geographical proximity, as well as job opportunities. Also, 324,179 Spanish-speaking immigrants reside in Italy, who in 2020 represent 6.4% of the total foreign population in Italy. Between 2000 and 2020, 201,594 Spanish-speaking immigrants acquired Italian nationality and this high number of naturalizations, together with the good command of the Italian language, is an indicator of the sociolinguistic integration of the group. In fact, Italy is the second country with the highest number of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Latin America within the European Union, only behind Spain, and Spanish is among the top ten languages of immigration.

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