José Luis García Delgado – författare

The Spanish language is not restricted to Spanish-speaking countries, for its knowledge and use have long spread beyond national borders. The current internationalization process of Spanish draws on various factors, such as cultural prestige, language teaching, the intensification of supranational contacts, migratory flows and virtual and digital communication – all of which are the result of a highly interconnected society. Europe is a major player in this process, with almost 100 million people communicating in Spanish. While the social and cultural dynamics associated to the Spanish language in the United States have been extensively studied, those observed in Europe are still largely unknown.One way of describing the internationalization of Spanish is language demography – an interdisciplinary approach aimed at quantifying potential users of the Spanish language and explaining how this community has been formed. This book analyzes Spanish-speaking populations in Europe, describing their main trends and explaining their most significant dynamics, migration and education. Main aspects include migratory contacts, the intergenerational transmission of the Spanish language, the position of Spanish in European educational systems and the role of translation and communication technologies.

Que futuro le espera al espanol como lengua internacional? Esta obra ofrece respuesta a ese interrogante desde un cuidadoso manejo de la informacion estadistica y con un creativo enfoque para explorar las dimensiones economicas que encierra una lengua. Como segundo idioma internacional por el numero de quienes lo tienen como dominio nativo y el cuarto por el total de quienes lo hablan, el espanol aporta no solo una poderosa sena de identidad colectiva, sino tambien uno de los intangibles mas valiosos para la comunidad de sus hablantes. Ante el imparable desarrollo de los mercados globales y las tecnologias de la comunicacion, es hora de explorar los posibles futuros que le aguardan a nuestro idioma e identificar las politicas para hacer realidad el escenario mas promisorio. A tal empeno se dedican los autores de este volumen, que retoman, de una manera original y brillante, la linea de investigacion que pusieron en marcha, en su dia, con el proyecto Valor economico del espanol.