How can Spanish become more popular globally?

Like how can Spanish become widely spoken outside of Spain/Latin America/possibility Philippines( I think they replaced it with English?). Like if it is more widely spoken outside of native speakers, what would it be the language of? Diplomacy? Science? Romance? The POD is 1492, but you can't have more countries speaking Spanish, except as a second language that is popular to learn in schools, like how French used to be.
 
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Like how can Spanish become widely spoken outside of Spain/Latin America/possibility Philippines( I think they replaced it with English?). Like if it is more widely spoken outside of native speakers, what would it be the language of diplomacy, science, romance, etc. The POD is 1492, but you can't have more countries speaking Spanish, except as a second language that is popular to learn in schools, like how French used to be.

Maybe Portugal somehow gets swallowed by Spain after the Leonese Castille unification and Spanish becomes dominant over Portugese . The Spaniards push far int North America and hold onto Spanish-Netherlands. The rest of the Netherlands is swallowed by France, the prince-bishop of Cologne. The Dutch and Portugese never establish empires of their own, the Brits ar satisfied by a bigger and more competent armada and are turned into a Spanish Catholic vassal who supplies Spain with naval know-how and men. France and Spain fight over the hegemony in North America with Spain but the Spaniards have the upper hand in this struggle(Maybe the french kings have greater trouble is centralizing their kingdom so French abolutism is weakened in this timeline). The Spaniards are the unchallenged Colonial Power and even Nippon opens their ports to them.
 
Maybe Portugal somehow gets swallowed by Spain after the Leonese Castille unification and Spanish becomes dominant over Portugese . The Spaniards push far int North America and hold onto Spanish-Netherlands. The rest of the Netherlands is swallowed by France, the prince-bishop of Cologne. The Dutch and Portugese never establish empires of their own, the Brits ar satisfied by a bigger and more competent armada and are turned into a Spanish Catholic vassal who supplies Spain with naval know-how and men. France and Spain fight over the hegemony in North America with Spain but the Spaniards have the upper hand in this struggle(Maybe the french kings have greater trouble is centralizing their kingdom so French abolutism is weakened in this timeline). The Spaniards are the unchallenged Colonial Power and even Nippon opens their ports to them.
Well, that defys the rule of Spanish not becoming the first language of more countries doesn't. I mean you just got Portugal speaking Spanish. My own ideas were something like Spain having a king that acts like Louis the XIV, and who ends up making Spanish culture and language popular.
 
Well, that defys the rule of Spanish not becoming the first language of more countries doesn't. I mean you just got Portugal speaking Spanish. My own ideas were something like Spain having a king that acts like Louis the XIV, and who ends up making Spanish culture and language popular.

French had been the high language since medival time, Iam not sure how to replace it in a post post 1492.
 
Easy answer is have Mexico keep it's possessions in what is now the Continental US. A Mexican state of that size would have significant global influence, probably on par with the US.
 
Easy answer is have Mexico keep it's possessions in what is now the Continental US. A Mexican state of that size would have significant global influence, probably on par with the US.
I think you would need to have the dynamics of the region change half a century before at least because by time of independence there were very few colonists there and the Natives were a pain hard to deal with.
 
I think you would need to have the dynamics of the region change half a century before at least because by time of independence there were very few colonists there and the Natives were a pain hard to deal with.

There's always the chance that a more populated California would just break away from Mexico and form its own country. It's not like the Hispanophone settlers in California had much love to be ruled from distant Mexico City.
 
There's always the chance that a more populated California would just break away from Mexico and form its own country. It's not like the Hispanophone settlers in California had much love to be ruled from distant Mexico City.
Still would be an Hispanophone one making it good anyway for the objective.

Edit: Not sure if we are not allowed to increase the number of Spanish speaking nations or that they would not count.
 
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If the United States had more liberal immigration rules, Spanish might have become much stronger there than in OTL.
 
If the United States had more liberal immigration rules, Spanish might have become much stronger there than in OTL.
That wouldn´t change anything:

Like if it is more widely spoken outside of native speakers, what would it be the language of? Diplomacy? Science? Romance? The POD is 1492, but you can't have more countries speaking Spanish, except as a second language that is popular to learn in schools, like how French used to be.
 
Well, that defys the rule of Spanish not becoming the first language of more countries doesn't. I mean you just got Portugal speaking Spanish. My own ideas were something like Spain having a king that acts like Louis the XIV, and who ends up making Spanish culture and language popular.

Since Portuguese is so close to Spanish, you'd more just fuse Portuguese into Spanish in terms of prestige language, and probably leave Portuguese no stronger than Catalan, if that. That'll add Brazil and the Portuguese Empire to the Spanish-speaking world.

But the main issue with making Spanish more popular is that even if Spain ruled the biggest empire in the world, it was mainly a bunch of resource extraction colonies that barely spoke Spanish since they were most all American Indians to begin with. There's without a doubt a way to make it more prominent, but speaking of French, remember that France was basically the China of Europe in terms of economic, military, demographic, and cultural strength. Spain was a bunch of kingdoms knitted together by inheritance and the Reconquista that happened to find a massive source of wealth that beyond all luck, they managed to conquer.

There's always the chance that a more populated California would just break away from Mexico and form its own country. It's not like the Hispanophone settlers in California had much love to be ruled from distant Mexico City.

Nor for that matter did the ones in New Mexico. Even Texas was a theatre during the Mexican independence wars, which found ample support there although that support would turn to opposition once the Mexico City government failed them as it did in New Mexico--Tejanos fought alongside Anglos in the Texas Revolution, after all.

The easiest way for Spain to gain a huge amount of land in North America (and actually hold it rather than just looking imposing on a map) is to loosen their immigration policy as well as to find the key gold/silver deposits in Colorado, Nevada, California, and Georgia. It's logical why they didn't find the California/Nevada resources, since the natives didn't know of it plus they were remote, but it's interesting Spain never found the gold in Georgia (known by the natives) or in Colorado (Spanish traders with the Plains Indians operated around there as well as the Spanish frontier armies operating against Indians). All four deposits are plausible for Spain to find, which will breath new life into the otherwise disfunctional Mexican North (or if early enough, spur Spanish colonisation of Georgia/Alabama--plenty of agricultural wealth to exploit there if low manpower compared to Latin America, hence where slaves come in).

If the United States had more liberal immigration rules, Spanish might have become much stronger there than in OTL.

As late as the 1920s, a Mexican could just walk across the border and pretend to be on some business or another and not be questioned, and later settle somewhere else in the US, with the US Border Patrol admitting in internal memos about how impossible the Mexican border was to secure. Incidentally, the Border Patrol didn't even exist until 1924 and mainly existed to chase down Chinese entering through Mexico--that's how liberal they were on Mexicans at that point. 10% of Mexicans fled the Mexican Revolution's violence, most going to the US. It seems pretty hard to beat that wave of immigration.

That said, the US could do far more with the Spanish language, like possibly turning it into a second language in parts, maybe even like the Quebec treatment. That seems anathema for an Anglo society, but certainly the former Spanish lands (at the very least New Mexico, and let's expand it to Arizona, California, and Texas) could have Spanish as a second language. But that's not the way to make Spanish more popular globally.
 
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