What do you think about this? The United States has the largest national Spanish-speaking community outside of Mexico
The United States has the largest national Spanish-speaking community outside of Mexico:
In total, there were 35,468,501 people in the United States who speak Spanish as their primary language at home, including 3.5 million in the territory of Puerto Rico, where Spanish is the primary language. Over half of the country's Spanish speakers reside in California, Texas, and Florida alone.
8 Answers
What do I think about this? Well, funny you should ask. 
While shopping today, I was looking around at all of the signs and advertisements in Spanish. Even most products are labelled in both languages. In addition, most grocery stores cater to the Latin American community with a large variety of food items. I picked up a copy of a Spanish magazine today and purchased it with my platanitos. I love it!!!! I see this more and more everywhere I go, at least in my part of the U.S. and my neighborhood in particular.
I'm glad you asked because just today I was thinking how great it is for me to be surrounded by Spanish as I learn. I know it might not be the same for other forum members from other countries. So for me.....I think it is amazing!!!! The more Spanish speaking people and Latin American influence the better as far as I'm concerned!!
I found this page that talks about languages in the U.S. and thought it fits this topic.
Makes me wonder where all the other forms - that should be written in EVERY language - are kept at the P.O., hospital, and all the other places where they have forms. I'd bet that, other than Spanish, they don't have any forms in a language that is not English. I know I haven't seen anything written in Mongolian in the U.S.
Cristalino said:
wouldn't that make Spain the next biggest Spanish-speaking community outside of México, or are we not counting the place where it all began?
Now you have me wondering and checking. My answer actually reflects my excitement that there is such a Spanish language influence in the U.S. I wasn't even checking the numbers. That response still stands. I am very thankful to live in a country where there is such an influence from the Spanish language and the Latin American culture.
That being said, I checked many different charts and graphs. 
I see what you're saying and I'm thinking that it is probably more likely that Spain does have a larger Spanish speaking population. But then again, numbers were never my thing. That is why I am interested in language.
But then I did see this. So in 39 years or so, I guess we could argue that the U.S. has the largest population of Spanish speaking people in the world. jeje
Cristalino said:
wouldn't that make Spain the next biggest Spanish-speaking community outside of México, or are we not counting the place where it all began?
Now you have me wondering and checking. My answer actually reflects my excitement that there is such a Spanish language influence in the U.S. I wasn't even checking the numbers. That response still stands. I am very thankful to live in a country where there is such an influence from the Spanish language and the Latin American culture.
That being said, I checked many different charts and graphs. I see what you're saying and I'm thinking that it is probably more likely that Spain does have a larger Spanish speaking population. But then again, numbers were never my thing. That is why I am interested in language.
But then I did see [this][1]. So perhaps in about 39 years, we could argue that we have the largest number of Spanish speaking people in the world. jeje
[1]: http://wouldn't that make Spain the next biggest Spanish-speaking community outside of México, or are we not counting the place where it all began?
Hmmm, what about la patria querida, Spain? According to some figures, the population of Spain officially reached 46 million people in 2008. And while not everyone within the borders speaks Spanish, surely the vast majority understand Spanish... wouldn't that make Spain the next biggest Spanish-speaking community outside of México, or are we not counting the place where it all began?
Luis: here is an article that speaks to this very subject = Más 'speak spanish' que en España = so, perhaps the motherland is in third place after all!
Living here in Denver, its very apparent that there are a large amount of Spanish speakers here in the U.S. In fact being surrounded by so many speakers is one of the reasons I developed a passion for learning Spanish. Right outside the front door of my apartment complex there is a stand that has two bilingual weekly newspapers. Often times when I leave for school in the morning Spanish is the first language I hear. Although learning Spanish is my passion and most of my friends nowadays are either native speakers or fellow students, I still manage to converse with at least 2-3 complete strangers in Spanish a day. There is an amazing phenomenon going on in the U.S. right now. What is really interesting to me is the evolution of the language here in the U.S. Right now in my classes there are students from Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc. Since we are all students we study and talk together all the time, naturally speakers start to pick up words from each other's dialects creating a lot of diversity.
I think the US should have two official languages. Spanish is used by so many people.
Speaking of stores, I enjoy going to Home Depot. Many of their signs have Spanish labels and descriptions of products.
wouldn't that make Spain the next biggest Spanish-speaking community outside of México, or are we not counting the place where it all began?
I think that Cristalino has a point on this. I took the information above from Wikipedia, which sometimes is not very trustworthy, after all. I will check that figure. Nevertheless, if America's Spanish-speaking community is not yet the second biggest community in the world it is indeed one of the biggest. And it is growing fast. So fast that in the article suggested by Nicole it is said that it will surpass Mexico's population by 2050, although I don't think that this prognosis is very accurate. That would mean that hispanics would exceed 150 million by that time!
Nevertheless, I found this interesting data in the page recomended by MrSillyInc:
With a purchasing power in excess of 800 billion, the U.S. Hispanic population constitutes the ninth largest economy in the world, larger than Brazil, Spain or Mexico!
