One of the really great benefits of learning Spanish is the fact that there are so many people that speak the language. Not only are there approximately 350,000,000 native speakers of Spanish (which ranks second in the world, by the way), but there are also millions of people added to that total who have learned Spanish as a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) language.
I have seen estimates of the total amount of people who can speak Spanish in the 400,000,000 to 500,000,000 range. Measuring the amount of people that speak a language is certainly not an exact science, however, we can get a pretty good idea.
In the United States, over 34,000,000 people speak Spanish as their primary language at home. In key states like California and Texas, the Spanish speaking population makes up approximately 35% of the total population. (The state with the highest percentage is New Mexico, which was at 43% as of 2004.) At least eight states have 1,000,000+ Spanish speakers. Lastly, Spanish is by far the most studied foreign language by students in the United States.
We all learn languages for our own unique reasons. But whatever reason you have, it’s hard to to deny the power of Spanish in the United States and beyond!