Philipp Krämer

(Freie Universität Berlin)

The paper investigates the role of Spanish in Berlin’s highly multilingual society. The accent will be on Spanish as a foreign language and the perception of its ‘market value’ in the city’s population. I will discuss the different options for Berliners to learn and study Spanish and try to quantify the offer of Spanish as a ‘product on the language market’ provided by different institutions. Subsequently, I will turn to the use of Spanish in the hospitality business as one of the key factors of Berlin’s economy. With the help of primarily quantitative survey data, I will illustrate the attitudes of employees in hotels and restaurants towards Spanish as a career asset and its place among other languages available on the ‘linguistic market’ of the tourist industry.