Austin Business Journal – July 21, 2005
Spanish-speaking residents in the Austin area is expected to soar by 55 percent within the next 20 years, according to study released Wednesday.
Austin joins Boston, Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., as major Hispanic markets in the United States that are projected to see 55 percent growth in their Spanish-speaking populations by 2025, according to a study released by Hispanic USA Inc. Those are the highest percentages in the study.
In Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston markets are expected to see Spanish-speaking increases of 49 percent by 2025. San Antonio’s Spanish-speaking population is expected to climb 40 percent.
The study estimates the current number of Spanish speakers ages 5 and above in the Austin area at 294,000. That figure is projected to rise to 374,000 in 2015 and 456,000 in 2025.
Nearly 780,000 Hispanics are expected to be living in Central Texas in 2025, up from the current 400,000, according to the Texas State Data Center.
The Hispanic USA study challenges the assumption that the use of Spanish will decline in coming years as succeeding generations of Hispanics are born and grow up in the United States. In fact, the study shows the number of Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States will reach 40.2 million, up from 27.8 million today.
The study, conducted for Hispanic USA by Roslow Research Group LLC, is based on an analysis of census data and national research. The study forecasts the use of the Spanish language in the United States through 2025.
Hispanic USA, which has offices in Miami and San Antonio, is a Hispanic market consulting firm.
Roslow Research Group, based in Port Washington, N.Y., specializes in the Hispanic market and other “diversity” sectors in the United States and Latin America.
Fluency Fast starts by doing a deep dive into companies. We spend time on construction sites (while wearing hard hats, of course), in restaurant kitchens, with front office staff, on the plant floor and in the golf-ball company to find out what employees need to be able to say and understand to effectively and safely communicate. We also ask owners and employers what their goals are. We personalize our teaching to your business.
We then put that information into a vocabulary list, cross-reference it with the highest frequency words in Spanish and from that, create stories in context that we can teach and that can later be read and listened to.
The difference between what we do and what a standard CD or book provides is personalization to the particular needs of the company. Standard industry-specific books contain thousands of individual words. It is as effective as reading a dictionary in alphabetical order. The truth is, most employees don’t need to be fluent in the language. They just need to be able to communicate effectively and have a solid base of the most important phrases in Spanish. Our approach is also different because with our method, larger classes are better. Our optimal class size is 30-75, but we can present to as many as 200.
