WASHINGTON, USA - The number of people in the
United States who speak a language other than English at home has nearly
tripled over the past three decades, far outpacing the overall
population growth, US data released on Tuesday showed.
While Spanish remains the
most widely spoken language after English, other languages, particularly
those from South Asia and Africa, have also soared in use, the US
Census Bureau said in a report.
Some 60.6 million people, or
nearly one in five people in the United States aged 5 or older, spoke a
language other than English at home in 2011, according to the report.
That is up from 23 million in 1980, or almost one in 11.
Over the three decades, the
number of people speaking a language other than English at home rose 158
per cent, far faster than the overall US population, which grew 38
percent.
“Spanish is the main
language, but there’s an increasing amount of linguistic diversity,”
said Peter Sayer, a professor at The University of Texas at San Antonio’s
Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies.
Among those
who speak a language other than English at home, two-thirds speak
Spanish. About 37.6 million people in the United States spoke Spanish at
home in 2011, up from about 11 million in 1980, the Census report
found.
Chinese was the next most widely spoken language with nearly 2.9 million speakers in 2011.
- Those two languages, along with Vietnamese, Russian, Persian, Armenian, Korean and Tagalog have seen their use more than double in the United states over the last 30 years. Other Asian and African languages such as Hindi and Swahili have also seen significant growth, the Census report said.
- Meanwhile, many European languages are fading in the United States.
- There are now half as many Italian speakers in the United States as there were in 1980. German, Hungarian, French, Greek, Yiddish, and Polish also saw significant drop-offs, according to the Census Bureau. The United States has tracked language use since 1890.
- The changes reflect a continuing shift in America’s make-up amid the latest wave of immigration from Asia and other regions following influxes from Mexico and other Central and Latin American countries and, before that, Europe.
- “While increased immigration led to gains for some language groups, other groups experienced aging populations and dwindling migrant flows into the United States,” the report said.
“As people get older and
spend time in the United States, they are increasingly likely to make
English their main language,” wrote Camille Ryan, the report’s author
and statistician at the agency.The language trend does not appear to be hurting the use of English, which remains the most widely spoken language in US homes, the findings showed.
Among those who speak another
language, 78 per cent said they speak English “well” or “very well,”
while 22 per cent said they speak English “not well” or “not at all,”
the 2011 data showed.
Sayer said the data dispels
the notion that immigrants resist learning English. “We continue to be a
country of immigrants, but that misconception of immigrants not
learning English is not really true,” he said.
Source: Agency
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