Different people have different reasons in learning Spanish. In the past, learning another language is mostly motivated by aesthetics (I love how Spanish songs are sung!) or academics (You can go anywhere if you know Spanish.) or by some other considerations.
Today, to learn Spanish would mean any or several of these reasons travel, economics, business, employment, aesthetics, etc.
Travel
Since it is now easier to visit any parts of the world, tourists and travelers would like to add an extra ingredient to make their adventure more fun-filled, and that is to learn the language.
Knowing Spanish when visiting countries like Mexico or any of the Central and South American countries certainly makes the life of the Spanish-speaking tourist much easier. The locals would know how to correctly entertain you because you know and say exactly what you want.
Since these people are naturally accommodating, ordinary tourists would also get what they want, but only after an unnecessary and useless time spent on clarifying things.
Business and employment.
Todays large companies with worldwide branches and connections already insist one other qualification from their applicants. Nowadays, applicants must be armed with knowledge of a second or third language. This requirement is over and above their present qualifications and other skills or expertise.
All over the world, the most popular second language chosen by applicants is Spanish.
If they already have a second language, they still will choose Spanish as their third language.
Because the world had become more connected, contact with people from other countries have enormously increased. For this reason, companies need more men and women who can communicate with the rest of the world.
With the rapidly-increasing Hispanic population, many lines of businesses in the U.S. have a great need for Spanish speaking personnel. The workers that are needed most are nurses, social workers, teachers, sales and marketing people, translators, and many more.
In the international front, Spanish-speaking people have opportunities lined up for them mostly in the trade and business areas. The other choices include Foreign Service and diplomacy, interpretation and security applications which all need proficiency in another language.
This also applies in other professions in science, medicine, law and others with specialized vocabularies. The lexicon of these professions is mostly Latin-based and Spanish is a good starting ground.
Other languages
Knowing Spanish gives you an edge in learning other Latin-based languages like French, Italian and Portuguese. It can also help you learn Russian and German because these languages have Indo-European roots. They have some similar characteristics with Spanish which are not found in English.
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This line of thinking applies to other languages that do not have any similarity with Spanish, like Japanese or Chinese. The argument is that after having learned Spanish, one has a vantage point of reference in learning just about any other languages.
Current facts
Today, more students of MBA choose to become trilingual with English, French and Spanish among the top three choices.
After English, Chinese and Hindi, the 4th most commonly spoken language in the world is Spanish. Geographically speaking, Chinese and Hindi are only widely spoken in China and India respectively. Spanish is spoken in more than 21 countries in both sides of the Atlantic.
Is it any wonder why more young people try to learn Spanish more than any other language?