SERENDIPITY 2016 Issue 1 | Page 26

Fun Facts

The U.S. Hispanic population now stands at 57 million, making

Hispanics the nation’s second-fastest-growing racial or ethnic group

after Asians. Today Hispanics make up 18% of the U.S. population,

up from 5%

With 329 million native speakers, Spanish ranks as the world's No. 2

language in terms of how many people speak it as their first

language. is slightly ahead of English (328 million) but behind

Chinese (1.2 billion).

There are 1.1 million Hispanic veterans of the U.S. armed forces.

The term “Hispanic” originally denoted a relationship to Hispania,

more commonly known as Portugal and Spain, and the people

colonized by those two countries.

According to the 2010 Census, Hispanics accounted for more than

half of the growth in United States population between 2000 and

2010. The U.S. is the fifth largest Hispanic country in the world. The

majority of the U.S. population is Mexican American, followed in size

by Central and South Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban

Americans.

Hispanics are the youngest of the major racial and ethnic groups in

the U.S