Bruno Mars was born Peter Gene Hernandez was born in Hawaii and has quite a mix of DNA. His father is Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Jewish, and his mother is Filipino and Spanish. Does Bruno Mars speak Spanish?
Bruno Mars is bilingual and the two languages that he speaks fluently are Spanish and English. English is his first language, and is what was predominately spoken in his home while growing up Waikiki, Hawaii.
Though Bruno Mars speaks Spanish, he does not have a native tongue and therefore speaks with a bit of an accent when using the language. He does however speak Spanish more fluently than most English speakers who learn it, and this is probably due to his ancestry, as well as being around it while growing up.
Bilingual Stats
There are many studies showing a range of how many people are bilingual, someone who can speak two languages fluently, and though world statistics are not kept it is estimated that 43% of the world’s population is bilingual.
Several countries around the world have more than one official language, which is why the number of polyglots, or people who speak more than one language, is so high. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the United States and Mexico, neither of whom have an official language, though they each have their own popular language.
Over 41 million Americans, which is approximately 13% of the population of the United States, speaks Spanish, making it by far the second spoken language in the country, behind Engish. Though exact numbers are hard to determine as the number of students learning the language rises, and there are no statistics for undocumented Spanish speakers within the country.
Many Americans, in addition to other prominent English countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, feel there’s no need to learn another language, as most of the various aspects of the business world all speak English.
Spanish Language
Spanish, or Castilian, is the world’s second most spoken language, behind Mandarin Chinese. There are ten main dialects of the Spanish language, and most are named after a region in which the native speakers come from.
Spanish is an official language in eight countries, and one territory, throughout the globe. Over 8% of the European Union population speak it natively, with another 7% of the E.U. population learning it as an additional language, on top of their native language.
As with most languages, Spanish came about by evolving from another language, in this case, it was Vulgar Latin around 210 B.C. The first written documentation that has been found to use the precursor to today’s Spanish was found to be from the 9th century.
Identity Crisis
Being multi-racial is not a big deal to Mars, he’s extremely proud of all of his roots and tries to pay homage to them regularly. It has also brought up a conversation about fitting people into a box when it comes to race. It is estimated that multi-racial individuals will surpass people of one or two racial backgrounds within our lifetime.
Bruno Mars has had to deal a lot with people trying to fit him into one box or another. When he started out in the mainstream music industry management wanted to tout him as a Latin singer, who sang in Spanish. Others weren’t sure if he was thug or Latin and had a hard time placing him.
The nickname Bruno was given to him when he was two, and originally that was going to be his stage name. Then he decided to add the name Mars as a last name. He wanted a name that had pizzazz and could cross genres. Many in the Puerto Rican community thought he was trying to deny his heritage, something he has often spoken about denying that was the reason.
Through it all, Bruno Mars has remained true to himself. He plays the music he wants to play, has the style he wants, and gets to pay homage to all of his racial heritages that he is so proud of.