ABSTRACT
The United States has a formidable presence in the Spanish-speaking world. Of the 50.5 million 1 Hispanics that live in the United States, 35.4 million of them speak Spanish. That figure ranks it as the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world; if estimates of up to 10 million undocumented and uncounted immigrants are factored in, then that ranking jumps up to second in the world, behind only Mexico. In either case, the United States has more Spanish speakers than Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and any Caribbean or Central American country, and it counts more Puerto Ricans (4.6 million) than Puerto Rico itself (3.7 million). As another point of comparison with a neighboring country, the total population of Canada is, at 33 million, less than the Spanish-speaking population of the United States.
