17 Reasons Every American Should Learn Spanish

Easier To Get A Job According to the U Easier To Get A Job According to the U.S Census Bureau, about 12 percent of U.S. residents speak Spanish at home. As a result rising number of jobs require Spanish or at least prefer individuals who can speak Spanish.

Your Children Will Speak Spanish By 2050, the US will be the largest Spanish speaking country, according to Humberto López Morales, the general secretary of the Association of Spanish Language Academies.

Bilingual In A Global World In an increasingly global world, being bilingual makes you a more competitive force in society for jobs, travel, speaking to clients abroad.

You Should Learn For When You Travel With 329 million native speakers, according to Ethnologue, Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in the world. Get to know your hemispheric neighbors in Latin America and fake your with through Portuguese in Brazil with your new language skills.

Helps Your English Spanish is derived from Latin, like many words in English (via French). Learning Spanish will boost your vocab by familiarizing you with words that have fallen out of everyday use in English, but have common equivalents in Spanish.

Second Most Commonly Spoken Language In U. S Second Most Commonly Spoken Language In U.S. You're bound to run into someone who speaks only Spanish in your daily life.

Makes It Easier To Learn A Third Language Once you learn one language it's easier to learn others.

Makes You Smarter That's right -- the latest research shows that being bilingual improves cognitive skills unrelated to language.

Some Industries Demand Spanish Speakers Kathryn Gilles, a new registered nurse at Sutter Memorial Hospital, in Sacramento, Calif., puts information into a patient's chart under the supervision of her mentor, Eileen Anderson, R.N., BSN, Friday, Aug. 17, 2012. California's jobless rate remained unchanged at 10.7 percent in July, as the state saw slow employment growth, adding a little more then 25,000 jobs. The figure released Friday by the California Employment Development is an improvement over the state's 11.9 percent unemployment rate of a year ago. Jobs were added last month to health care, the government sector, financial and professional services, education and the hospitality industry. But job losses were seen in construction, manufacturing, transportation and information sectors.

It's Not A Hard Language To Learn Chinese requires learning tones. French is spelled funny. Arabic has a different alphabet. Spanish, on the other hand, is spelled phonetically and many of the words are similar to English.

To Improve Cultural Understanding Latinos are one of the fast-growing populations in the United States. English may be the country's most commonly spoken language, but America doesn't have an official language. We come from all around the world, and some 50 million of us have our roots in Spanish-speaking countries. Spanish can often help you get to know your neighbors.

Reduces Risk Of Alzheimer's Seriously, for real. Fluency in two languages reduces risk of Alzheimer's.

Watch Foreign Movies Without Reading Subtitles Understand the subtleties and get the jokes in real time next time you watch a film from Latin America or Spain once you master the language

Expand Your Dating Pool Knowing another language, especially one popular in your own country boosts the amount of potential dating partners you might find. Know how to flirt in Spanish and get a leg up on the competition.

Accomplish Routine Tasks On The Border Ever find yourself in downtown Laredo, Texas or somewhere in Miami without an English speaker in sight? Learning to speak Spanish will take care of the problem.

Impress Your Friends Americans have a reputation for being monolingual, though about 20 percent of us speak a language other than English at home. Impress your friends by joining the ranks of the bilingual. Better yet -- help them learn too!

Understand Foreign Song Lyrics Curious why those tango singers are wailing about so dramatically? Want to know what those reggaeton guys are yelling about? Interested in knowing what the salsa your dancing to means? Learn Spanish and find out.