Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Marcelo Tano, I am Franco-Argentinian, associate professor and doctor in Spanish, tenured at the University of Lorraine and associated researcher at Lairdil (Lansad Interuniversity Research Laboratory in Didactics) of the University of Toulouse.
I am also the coordinator for France of the “Spanish in Europe” project, led by the University of Heidelberg and the University of Zurich: this is a research project aimed at the publication of volumes on demolinguistics. of Spanish, broken down by zone or country. This project, in which around a hundred researchers from 51 European universities participate, has just obtained the International Prize for Hispanism, awarded in 2024 by the Scientific Committee of the Permanent Observatory of Hispanism of the Duques de Soria Foundation. The jury qualified the “Spanish in Europe” team as “the best active research group in recent years”, specifying that it is the “most promising” academic project.
What is the place of the Spanish language in the world today?
The Cervantes Institute produces an annual directory which shows that the practice of Spanish around the world is constantly increasing. It is the second native language worldwide, and is spoken by more than 600 million speakers worldwide (500 million native speakers and 100 million users outside Spanish-speaking countries). This represents 7.5% of the world's population. In particular, there are 64 million Americans of Hispanic origin (15% of voters). No less than 24 million students learn Spanish, in many countries such as the United States, Brazil, France…
How does France fare in terms of learning Spanish?
France is the first country in Europe and the third in the world for learning Spanish: if we add primary, secondary and higher education, there are more than 3.5 million students in France.
Spanish is the most chosen LV2 in secondary and higher education. 60% of middle and high school students learn Spanish and, according to my latest estimates, around 250,000 students perfect this language in higher education in mainland France.
How do we explain this success?
The first point is the set of linguistic policies which encourage this learning, and the offer of National Education which provides for the learning of two modern languages.
There is also the promotion of the language by structures such as the Cervantès Institute, which works in 103 cities around the world, including four in France (Bordeaux, Lyon, Paris and Toulouse).
We also observe a strong attraction towards Hispanic cultures and a strong presence of the Spanish language in the cultural industries: films, series, music, books, video games… To give some figures for 2024: 21% of the most listened to songs on Spotify are in Spanish; Spanish is the second most important language in film production, the second most important language in the Western world on the Internet, the third language in the field of translation and the sixth in editorial production.
Culture is, therefore, a good entry into learning Spanish. In research, we do not distinguish between language and culture; there are always cultural aspects that we convey when teaching the language.
What value does fluency in Spanish have in the job market?
The success of Spanish can also be explained by the economic value of the language which gives it a certain usefulness as an option for the future: it is not only English which positions itself in the markets, because mastery English constitutes a trivial skill (a capacity commonly observed among the majority), while that of Spanish becomes a non-trivial skill. In a market economy, non-trivial skills are often better paid. When we offer a company the possibility of managing a project in the client's language, we have a more interesting profile. And Spanish is the language of many clients of French companies. Let us also remember that France has long been Spain's leading commercial partner, where there are more than 2,500 French companies established (and more than 550 in Mexico, more than 250 in Argentina, more than 200 in Colombia).
Spanish sets a CV apart and constitutes a competitive advantage in terms of employability or career development. It is a professionalization tool in many sectors: business, commerce, culture, tourism, international cooperation, technologies… According to a recent study, Spanish is requested in around a third of job advertisements in France, which allows us to affirm that it is a language of trades and professions. In a world where knowledge of English is essential but insufficient, Spanish becomes an added value of differentiation because linguistic diversification is a source of profit on an economic level.
What is Lansad?
Lansad means “LANGUAGE for Specialist in Other Disciplines” and therefore designates the teaching of languages in courses other than those specialized in languages. Spanish occupies second place. Indeed, it is present in the programs of almost all higher education courses, in all cycles (license, master, doctorate), under all statuses (classic, work-study), such as LV1, LV2 or LV3, and in several modalities (face-to-face, distance learning, hybrid). In this context, the English-Spanish pairing is the most popular among students.
Lansad is made up of several major sectors in higher education: university Lansad (47% of students in Spanish), but also business and management schools (17%), engineering schools (13%), sections higher technicians (7%), Preparatory Courses for Grandes Écoles (4%), specialized higher schools integrated into universities (1%).
According to my latest studies made public in research reports, 89% of students are on Lansad-type courses. This sector therefore guides the dynamics of the whole throughout the metropolitan territory since only 11% of students are enrolled in a language specialist course. You should know that Higher Education has not yet grasped the importance of the Lansad sector since no public data is available on this subject.
Lansad has its own epistemology. To the traditional paradigm of interpreting Spanish as a language of culture or as the language of the neighboring country, Lansad adds a new paradigm, that of considering the language as a tool for professionalization. If language specialists are trained according to traditional methods (grammar, translation, literature), non-language specialists (that is to say, specialists in other disciplines) appropriate the linguistic instrument mainly through active methods (dialogues, tasks, simulations, projects, case analysis, problem-based learning, games, etc.) which adopt communicative and actional approaches.
What future for the teaching of Spanish in France and around the world?
There is a chance that it will continue to increase. For years, its uninterrupted annual growth has been 2%. The other hypothesis is that it stabilizes, in particular in secondary education where there is the largest offer of training in Spanish in the entire European Union.
Nevertheless, in the French case it would be necessary to particularly fight against all-english which is implemented in certain contexts. We observe what I call a “simplifying pragmatism” which leads decision-makers not to encourage multilingualism (often due to lack of knowledge on the subject, or lack of resources or simply by a decision far removed from societal demand). However, they would benefit from consolidating the training offer in Spanish, for example by establishing the possibility of studying the language at all three levels (primary, secondary and university) without interruption.
It would be appropriate to offer a Spanish option in primary school in all academies, especially since there is an interest in starting early: cognitively speaking, studies prove that it is better to start learning languages before the age 10 years old.
We must also attribute a professional value to the language, particularly in higher education, and show the indicators to decision-makers: the professional world today is complex, interdependent, international and, what is more, it is no longer just French.
