World Domination or Communication?

In a country only slightly more than twice the size of Oregon, live some 42 million people. Including me and my family. The Spanish climate is temperate, with extremely warm summers, and mild winters where snow chiefly falls in the mountainous regions, missing a large proportion of the country.

There are 19 autonomous communities within Spain, (including the Balearic Islands and Canary Islands, and three small Spanish possessions off the coast of Morocco - Islas Chafarinas, Penon de Alhucemas, and Penon de Velez de la Gomera). Within the communities, Castilian is the official language nationwide, spoken by 74% of the population (Catalan is spoken by 17%, Galician 7%, and Basque 2%. These languages are official regionally.)

My kids are growing up speaking three languages, in three distinct settings. English is the predominant language at home, Valenciano (variation of Catalan) is the designated language at school, although they also have lessons in Castellano and English. Castellano is also spoken widely in this area where so many European settlers live or where the Spanish are not all native Valenciano speakers.

We are a living experiment.

Bombarded daily with phrases from Spanish TV, Valenciano slang in the streets of our village, and the overwhelming American English content from film, TV and radio programmes, we are stuffing our brains with language content that actually covers the greater proportion of the globe. Spanish is spoken by 500 million people all over the world, and it is the first language for about 300 million people. Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. But although English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, (after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish), when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world.

With the internet and computers predominantly English too, the world is becoming globally accessible in a way that it never has been before. I wonder what our future will hold?