When will Spanish overtake "English" as the official language of the USA?

For that to happen, FIRST English should become official language of the U. S.

I think that... that step wil be taken. English will be declared as official language. But by the time this happens... there'll be so many spanish speakers in the Congress, and so many Spanish speakers who have right to vote... that... Spanish will be an official language too.

So... what I expect is that both languages stand together. This is a good thing! Americans are known for having such a poor capacity of learning foreign languages. I know it is a cliché, but it is there! Having two languages as official will help that country.

The USA has no official language. The national language is English because about 80% of the population speaks it natively. The 15% that speak Spanish natively are unlikely to ever overtake the other 80%.

Picture this realistic future:

Peak oil hits (as if it hasn't hit already) and the world faces reality: air travel is over. The future is worldwide, high-speed, electric rail powered by nuclear energy. (The only major project needed is a land bridge between Russia and Alaska. Connecting everything else, except Australia, is easy, cheap, and doesn't need new technology.)

That means to get out of South America, you've gotta go through North America. In time, Spanish might dominate both continents completely, including Canada (YES, Quebec, you too) and Brazil, despite their large population speaking Portuguese.

In such a scenario, if anyone thinks the US will dominate, you're mistaken. It's a fading empire and the "new socialism" of South America (let the market work and the government fills the holes) will become the dominant ideology of democratic countries because it works; the US's system doesn't.

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This is a good question; as other countries has for their second language the English language. Now what shell the English speaking countries have for their second language!

Spanish is great for the Americans, French is great for Canadians, for the Australians and English etc.

Wonder if the French consider the English language as the their best second language, when they are sober of course.

It won't be English or Spanish. They will both evolve.

Maybe it will some kind of Spanglish.

Or maybe as China becomes the dominant economic force more and more element of Chinese will enter the language and we will end up with Chinglish (maybe spoken with a vaguely Indian accent).

I think that US will become like Canada, french and english vs spanish and english

i dont think it ever will i think the usa will start to change to chinese in the next 20 years as there second langauge just how the auzzies and kiwis did. see china is the 2nd biggest power in the world and everything is made there. most english speakers in the usa hate speaking spanish. I think you will find that maybe only miami and texas and maybe new mexico speak spanish as a 2nd langauge and the rest just speak english.

chinese is all the rage dont go back to a 3rd world langauge like spanish. look at the spainish speaking countries there like the 3rd world. china is becoming a 1st world nation.

Never. For that to happen illegal immigrants would have to out populate natives. With 360 million natives, there are nowhere near enough people in Mexico to do that, apart from that, our constitution is written in English and English is everywhere on every sign. America has no official language, as of yet, but I believe sometime in the near future it will adopt English as its national language in response to the growing Spanish problem.

This is another popular urban myth. The number of Americans who speak Spanish as their first language is fairly static. Their children tend to speak English as their first language and Spanish as their second. There is no trend towards Spanish ever becoming the majority language.

I don't think it'll happen *that* soon. I mean, places like TX and California have large hispanic populations. But still, the country is based on the English language. This "ridicule" of the USA is just playing the race card.