Searches surge for Spanish study after Bad Bunny halftime
Aspiring Spanish speakers are rushing to learn the language following Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show.
A spike in activity on Duolingo preceding the much-heralded all-Spanish set hadn’t changed much Tuesday, although the language app company acknowledged it was too early to know whether it would last.
“Is this what a one-night stand looks like?” » Duolingo joked to X about whether interest would translate into an actual relationship.
Initial statistics were promising, as indicated by post-match Google search trends reported by the Canada Sports Betting website. Looking at several Google Trends search terms referencing Bad Bunny and “learn Spanish,” punters detected “major spikes in curiosity about Spanish,” the site reported. This showed a 122% increase in searches for “learn Spanish” in the United States in the 24 hours after the Super Bowl, and a 96% increase in Canada.
New Hampshire leads the United States in “curiosity score” for a surge of searches for “Bad Bunny lyrics” and “Bad Bunny translation,” followed by Rhode Island, Maine, Pennsylvania, and a tie for Colorado and Kentucky for relevant variations of these terms.
People were packed ahead of Sunday’s performance even before the Puerto Rican artist, whose first name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, joked on “Saturday Night Live” in October that viewers had “four months to learn” the language.
The joke inflamed fans and haters, with followers scrambling to learn enough Spanish to at least keep up, often using Bad Bunny’s lyrics to teach themselves — although language company Babbel noted that the lessons might not apply in daily life — and a number of conservatives upset at the idea of a 13-minute set of songs without English. Bad Bunny’s historic Grammy album, the first Spanish-language album to win the honor, sparked even more excitement among the faithful.
In the United States, up to 60 million people already speak Spanish, including 42 million at home, according to data from the Instituto Cervantes. In fact, American Spanish speakers outnumber those in Spain and are on track to become the second largest country behind Mexico by 2060.
With news feed services
