It’s been Bad Bunny’s biggest, baddest month yet Last week the Puerto Rican singer, Spotify’s most-streamed artist for four of the past six years, became the first musician to win an album-of-the-year Grammy in Spanish. In his acceptance speech he won cheers for taking a swipe at Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown: “ICE out”. On Sunday, he will become the first Latino star to headline the Super Bowl halftime show, singing primarily in Spanish.
Last week the Puerto Rican singer became the first musician to win an album-of-the-year Grammy entirely in Spanish (AP).Bad Bunny’s victory adds to the impression that Spanish is growing overwhelmingly in the Americas. With more than 40 million Spanish speakers, it is the fifth largest Hispanophone country in the world. Babbel, which makes a language-learning app, says the share of American users studying Spanish will grow from 26% to 60% from 2012 to 2025. The agency notes that Spanish podcasts are gaining listeners, Spanish-speaking artists are winning more Oscar nominations, and the number of books among Spanish is increasing. Such trends sharpen decades-old fears that America is becoming a bilingual country, fundamentally different from what most Americans knew.
That is unlikely. The number of Spanish speakers in the Americas will likely plateau and eventually reverse for two reasons. A clear immigration policy. The flow of immigrants from Latin America has become a trickle under Mr. Trump. And ICE is deporting as many illegal (and sometimes legal) immigrants as possible. No doubt the crackdown will be easier under a future Democratic administration, but America probably won’t be as welcoming as before.
Another trend is less visible and important. The longer Latino families stay in America, the less Spanish they speak. According to Pew, a pollster, 69% of second-generation Latino immigrants—that is, the first generation born in America—speak Spanish. This drops to 34% in the third generation. Pew does not survey the next generation, but only 57% of American-born Latinos overall speak Spanish.
Unlike many English-speakers, Spanish-speakers worry — with good reason — about the fate of their language in America. Don’t say “no sabo baby” or speak bad Spanish. (No sabo is “Spanglish” for “I don’t know.” It’s no sé in proper Spanish.) Most non-Spanish-speaking Latinos admit they’ve been shamed by other Latinos for not saying it. But 87% of American-born Latinos say that speaking Spanish is not necessary to be considered Latino.
America is changing Spanish as much as Spanish-speakers are changing America. Borrowings from English are common, such as “buildin” and “zyskul” (“building” and “high school”). Kim Potowski of the University of Illinois, Chicago highlights how Spanish words are being used in English ways, such as “escribir un papel”, “to write a paper” (in Spanish papel is not used for this type of paper). American Latinos borrow entire grammatical structures from English in sentences like “Es la chica que hablé con”—”the girl I was talking to”—whereas “that girl I was talking to” for Traditional Spanish.
America’s assimilation machine turned huge waves of Germans and Italians into monoglot Americans over the centuries. For a while, thanks to bilingual schools and Spanish radio and television stations, Latinos seemed to be the exception. They don’t. Mr. Trump won nearly half of the Latino vote in 2024; 36% of Latinos support making English the official language. Spanish is under threat in America, not English. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl set may not mark the rise of Spanish in America, but its peak.
