The
United
States
does not have an official language; however, the majority
of the population speaks English as
a native language (some 82%). The variety of English spoken
in the United States is known as
American English; together with
Canadian English it makes up the group of
dialects known as
North American
English. 96% of the population of the U.S. speaks English
"well" or "very well". There have been several proposals to make
English the national language in amendments to immigration reform
bills. None of these bills have become law with the amendment
intact.
Spanish is the second most common
language in the country, and is spoken by over 12% of the
population.
The United States holds the world's fifth
largest Spanish-speaking population, outnumbered only by Mexico
, Spain
, Argentina
, and Colombia
.
Throughout the
Southwestern
United States, long-established Spanish-speaking communities
coexist with large numbers of more recent Spanish-speaking
immigrants. Although many new Latin American immigrants are less
than fluent in English, second-generation
Hispanic Americans commonly
speak English fluently, while only about half still speak
Spanish.
According to the 2000 US census, people of
German ancestry make up the largest single
ethnic group in the United States, and the
German language ranks fifth.
Italian,
Polish, and
Greek are still widely spoken among
populations descending from immigrants from those countries in the
early 20th century, but the use of these languages is dwindling as
older generations pass away.
Russian is also spoken by immigrant
populations.
Tagalog and
Vietnamese have over one million
speakers in the United States, almost entirely within recent
immigrant populations.
Both languages, along with the varieties of
the Chinese language, Japanese, and Korean, are now used in elections in
Alaska
, California
, Hawaii
, Illinois
, New York
, Texas
, and
Washington
.
There is also a small population of
Native Americans who
still speak their native languages, but these populations are
decreasing, and the languages are almost never widely used outside
of reservations.
Hawaiian,
although having few native speakers, is still used at the state
level in Hawaii along with
the English language. Likewise, Louisiana declared
French an official language alongside
English in 1974. Besides English, Spanish, French, German,
Navajo and other Native American languages,
all other languages are usually learned from immigrant ancestors
that came after the time of independence or learned through some
form of
education.
Approximately 337 languages are spoken or signed by the population,
of which 176 are indigenous to the area. 52 languages formerly
spoken in the country's territory are now extinct.
Census statistics
According to the 2000 census, the main languages by number of
speakers older than five are:
- English - 215 million
- Spanish - 28 million
- Chinese languages - 2.0 million
+ (mostly Cantonese speakers, with a
growing group of Mandarin
speakers)
- French - 1.6 million
- German - 1.4 million (High
German) + German dialects like Hutterite German, Texas German, Pennsylvania German, Plautdietsch
- Tagalog - 1.2 million + (Most
Filipinos may also know other Philippine languages, e.g. Ilokano, Pangasinan, Bikol languages, and Visayan languages)
- Vietnamese - 1.01
million
- Italian - 1.01 million
- Korean - 890,000
- Russian - 710,000
- Polish - 670,000
- Arabic - 610,000
- Portuguese - 560,000
- Japanese - 480,000
- French Creole -
450,000 (mostly Louisiana Creole
French - 334,500)
- Greek - 370,000
- Hindi - 320,000
- Persian - 310,000
- Urdu - 260,000
- Gujarati - 240,000
- Armenian - 200,000
Official language status
[[File:USA State Languages.svg|thumb|right|280px|Official language
status of states and territories.
]]
The United States does not have a national
official language; nevertheless,
English (specifically,
American English) is the primary language
used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties,
federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements,
although there are laws requiring documents such as ballots to be
printed in multiple languages when there is a large number of
non-English speakers in an area.
States with official English
The
English-only movement
seeks to establish English as the only official language of the
entire nation.
States without official English
- * Official English Legislation
has been introduced in the current legislative
session.
Several states and territories are officially or
de facto bi- or trilingual:
Status of other languages
The State of Alaska provides voting information in
Iñupiaq,
Central Yup'ik,
Gwich'in,
Siberian Yupik,
Koyukon, and
Tagalog, as well as English.
California has agreed to allow the publication of state documents
in other languages to represent minority groups and immigrant
communities. Languages such as
Spanish,
Chinese,
Korean,
Tagalog,
Persian,
Russian,
Vietnamese, and
Thai appear in official state documents, and
the Department of Motor Vehicles publishes in 9 languages.
In
New
Mexico
, although the state constitution does not specify
an official language, laws are published in English and Spanish,
and government material and services are legally required (by Act)
to be made accessible to speakers of both languages. Some have
asserted that the New Mexico situation is part of the provisions in
the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo; however, no mention of "language rights" is made in
the Treaty or in the Protocol
of Querétaro, beyond the "Mexican inhabitants" having (1) no
reduction of rights below those of citizens of the United States
and (2) precisely the same rights as are mentioned in Article III
of the Treaty of the Louisiana
Purchase and in the Treaty of the Florida Purchase. This would imply that the legal status of the Spanish
language in New Mexico and in non-Gadsden Purchase areas of Arizona is the
same as of French in Louisiana
and certainly not less than that of German in
Pennsylvania.
The state
of New
York had state government documents (i.e., vital
records) co-written in the Dutch
language until the 1920s, in order to preserve the legacy of
New Netherlands, though England
annexed the colony in 1664.
Native American languages
are official or co-official on many of the U.S.
Indian reservations and
pueblos.
In Oklahoma
before statehood in 1907, territory officials
debated whether or not to have Cherokee, Choctaw and Muscogee languages as co-official, but the
idea never gained ground.
The issue
of bilingualism also applies in the
states of Arizona
and Texas, while the
constitution of Texas has no official language policy.
Arizona passed a proposition in the
November 7, 2006 general
election declaring English as the official language.
Nonetheless, Arizona law requires the distribution of voting
ballots in languages such as Navajo and Tohono O'odham in certain
counties.
In 2000, the
census bureau printed the
standard census questionnaires in six languages:
English,
Spanish,
Korean,
Chinese (in
traditional characters),
Vietnamese, and
Tagalog.
Indigenous languages
Native American languages
The
Native American
languages predate European settlement of the
New World. In a few parts of the U.S. (mostly on
Indian reservations), they
continue to be spoken fluently. Most of these languages are
endangered, although there are
efforts to revive them.
Normally the fewer the speakers of a
language the greater the degree of endangerment, but there are many
small Native American language communities in the Southwest
(Arizona and New
Mexico) which continue to thrive despite their small
size.
The U.S. (and North America in general) is one of the most
linguistically diverse areas in the world, as
Edward Sapir observes:
"Few people realize that within the confines of the
United States there is spoken today a far greater variety of
languages ... than in the whole of Europe.
We may go further.
We may say, quite literally and safely, that in the
state of California alone there are greater and more numerous
linguistic extremes than can be illustrated in all the length and
breadth of Europe."
According to the
2000 Census and other language surveys, the
largest Native American language-speaking community by far is the
Navajo. The largest communities are:
Navajo
178,000 speakers.
Navajo is one of
the Athabascan languages of the
Na-Dené family.
Dakota
Dakota has 18,000 speakers (22,000
including speakers in Canada), not counting 6,000 speakers of the
closely related
Lakota. Dakota is a
member of the
Siouan language
family.
Central Alaskan Yup'ik
Central Alaskan Yup'ik has 16,000
speakers. The Yup'ik are part of the
Eskimo-Aleut language family but are
not Inuit.
Cherokee
Cherokee, which has 16,000
speakers, belongs to the
Iroquoian
language family. The Cherokee have the largest tribal
affiliation in the U.S., but most are of mixed ancestry and do not
speak the language.
Recent efforts to preserve and increase the
Cherokee language in Oklahoma and the Cherokee Indian reservation in North
Carolina
have been
productive.
Western Apache
Western Apache, with 12,500 speakers, is a
Southern Athabaskan language
closely related to Navajo, but not mutually intelligible with
it.
Piman
Piman dialects (Pima and Tohono
O'odham) have more than 12,000 speakers. Piman is one of the
Uto-Aztecan languages along
with
Hopi,
Comanche,
Huichol, and
Aztec.
Choctaw
Choctaw has 11,000 speakers. One of
the
Muskogean language family,
like
Seminole and
Alabama.
Keres
Keres has 11,000 speakers. A
language isolate, the Keres are the
largest of the Pueblo nations.
The Keres pueblo of Acoma
is the
oldest continually inhabited community in the United
States.
Zuni
Zuni has 10,000 speakers.
Zuni is a language
isolate mostly spoken in a single pueblo, Zuni
, the largest in the U.S.
Ojibwe
Ojibwe has 7,000 speakers (about
55,000 including speakers in Canada). The
Algonquian language family includes populous
languages like
Cree in Canada.
Other languages
Many other languages have been spoken within the current borders of
the United States. The following is a list of 28 language
families (groups of demonstrably related languages)
indigenous to the territory of the continental United States. With
further study, some of these will probably turn out to be related
to each other. For example, a relationship between Alsea, Coos,
Siuslaw, and Wintu looks promising.
In addition to the above list of families, there are many languages
in the United States that are sufficiently well-known to attempt to
classify but which have not been shown to be related to any other
language in the world. These 25 language isolates are listed below.
With further study, some of these will likely prove to be related
to each other or to one of the established families. Yuki-Wappo,
for example, looks promising, and Natchez is frequently classified
with the Muskogean family. Others, such as Cayuse and Adai, are so
poorly known that it will probably never be possible to classify
them properly. There are also larger and more contentious proposals
such as
Penutian and
Hokan.
Since the languages in the Americas have a history stretching for
about 17,000 to 12,000 years, current knowledge of American
languages is limited. There are doubtless a number of languages
that were spoken in the United States that are missing from
historical record.
Native American sign languages
A sign-language
trade pidgin, known as
Plains Indian Sign
Language or
Plains Standard, arose
among the
Plains Indians. Each
signing nation had a separate signed version of their spoken
language, that was used by the hearing, and these were not mutually
intelligible. Plains Standard was used to communicate between these
nations.
It seems to have started in Texas and then
spread north, through the Great Plains
, as far as British Columbia
. There are still a few users today,
especially among the
Crow,
Cheyenne, and
Arapaho. Unlike other sign languages developed by
hearing people, it shares the spatial grammar of deaf sign
languages.
Austronesian languages
Hawaiian
Hawaiian is an official state language of
Hawaii as prescribed in the Constitution of Hawaii.
Hawaiian has 1,000 native speakers. Formerly considered critically
endangered, Hawaiian is showing signs of language renaissance. The
recent trend is based on new Hawaiian language immersion programs
of the
Hawaii State
Department of Education and the
University of Hawaii, as well as
efforts by the
Hawaii State
Legislature and county governments to preserve Hawaiian place
names. In 1993, about 8,000 could speak and understand it; today
estimates range up to 27,000. Hawaiian is related to the
Māori language spoken by around 150,000
New Zealanders and Cook Islanders as well as the
Tahitian language which is spoken by
another 120,000 people of Tahiti.
Samoan
Samoan is an official territorial language
of American
Samoa
. Samoans make up 90% of the population, and
most people are bilingual.
Chamorro
Chamorro is co-official in the Mariana
Islands, both in the territory of Guam
and in the
Commonwealth of the
Northern
Mariana Islands
. In Guam, the Chamorro people make up about
60% of the population.
Carolinian
Carolinian is also co-official
in the Northern Marianas, where only 14% of people speak English at
home.
Immigrant languages
Some of the first European languages to be spoken in the U.S. are
English,
Dutch,
German,
French, and
Spanish.
From the mid-19th century on, the nation had large numbers of
immigrants who spoke little or no English, and throughout the
country state laws, constitutions, and legislative proceedings
appeared in the languages of politically important immigrant
groups. There have been bilingual schools and local newspapers in
such languages as
German,
Hungarian,
Irish,
Italian,
Norwegian,
Greek,
Polish,
Swedish,
Romanian,
Czech,
Japanese,
Yiddish,
Hebrew,
Lithuanian,
Welsh,
Cantonese,
Bulgarian,
Dutch,
Portuguese and others, despite opposing
English-only laws that, for example, illegalized church services,
telephone conversations, and even conversations in the street or on
railway platforms in any language other than English, until the
first of these laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1923
(
Meyer v. Nebraska).
Currently, Asian languages account for the majority of languages
spoken in immigrant communities:
Korean, the
varieties of Chinese, and various Indian or
South Asian languages like
Hindi/
Urdu,
Gujarati,
Marathi,
Punjabi,
Bengali,
Tamil,
Telugu and
Malayalam,
Arabic,
Vietnamese,
Tagalog,
Persian, and others. Typically, immigrant
languages tend to be lost through assimilation within two or three
generations, though there are some groups such as the
Cajuns (French),
Pennsylvania Dutch (German) in a state
where large numbers of people were heard to speak it before the
1950s, and the original settlers of the
Southwest (Spanish) who have maintained
their languages for centuries.
English
English language distribution in the
United States.
English was
inherited from
British colonization,
and it is spoken by the vast majority of the population. It serves
as the
de facto official language:
the language in which government business is carried out. According
to the 1990 census, 96% of U.S. residents speak English "well" or
"very well." Only 0.8% speak no English at all as compared with
3.6% in 1890.
American English is
different from
British English in
terms of spelling (a classic example being the dropped "u" in words
such as color/colour), grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and slang
usage. The differences are not usually a barrier to effective
communication between an
American
English and a
British English
speaker, but there are certainly enough differences to cause
occasional misunderstandings, usually surrounding slang or region
dialect differences.
Some
states, like California, have amended their constitutions to make English
the only official language, but in practice, this only means that
official government documents must at least be in English,
and does not mean that they should be exclusively
available only in English. For example, the standard
California Class C
driver's license
examination is available in 32 different languages.
Spanish
Spanish language distribution in the
United States.
Spanish is taught in various regions as a
second language, especially in areas
with large Hispanic populations such as the Southwestern United States along
the border with Mexico, as well as Florida
, the District of Columbia
, Illinois, New
Jersey
, and New
York. In Hispanic communities across the country,
bilingual signs in both Spanish and English may be quite common.
Furthermore, numerous neighborhoods exist
(such as Washington Heights
in New York
City
or Little
Havana
in Miami
) in which
entire city blocks will have only Spanish language signs and
Spanish-speaking people.
In addition to Spanish-speaking Hispanic populations, younger
generations of non-Hispanics in the United States seem to be
learning Spanish in larger numbers due to the growing Hispanic
population and increasing popularity of Latin American movies and
music performed in the Spanish language.
Over 30 million
Americans, roughly 12% of the population, speak Spanish as a first
or second language, making Spanish easily the country's second-most
spoken language; the United States thus has the fifth-largest
Spanish speaking population in the world after Mexico, Spain, Colombia, and Argentina.
Spanglish is a code-switching variant of Spanish and English
and is spoken in areas with large bilingual populations of Spanish
and English speakers, such as along the Mexico – United States
border (California, Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas), Florida, and New York City.
Arabic
Arabic is spoken by immigrants from the
Middle East as well as many
Muslim Americans.
The highest
concentrations of native Arabic speakers reside in heavily urban
areas like Chicago
, New York
City, and Los
Angeles
. Detroit
and the surrounding areas of Michigan boast a
significant Arabic-speaking population including many Arab
Christians of Lebanese, Syrian
, and
Palestinian descent.
Arabic is used for religious purposes by Muslim Americans and by
some Arabic Christians (notably
Catholics
of the Malekite rite and
Maronites as well
as Rum Orthodox). A significant number of educated Arab
professionals who immigrate often already know English quite well,
as it is widely used in the Middle East. Lebanese immigrants also
have a broader understanding of French as do many Arabic-speaking
immigrants from
North Africa.
Chinese
Chinese, mostly of the Cantonese variety, is the third most-spoken
language in the United States, almost completely spoken within
Chinese American populations and by
immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, especially in California. Many young Americans not of Chinese descent
have become interested in learning the language, specifically
Standard Mandarin, the official
spoken language in the People's Republic of China
. Over 2 million Americans speak
some variety of
Chinese, with the
Mandarin
variety becoming increasingly more prevalent due to the opening
up of the PRC.
In
New York
City at least, although Mandarin is spoken as a native
language among only 10% of Chinese speakers, it is used as a
secondary dialect among the greatest number of them and is on its
way to replace Cantonese as their lingua
franca.
Dutch
Dutch language distribution in the
United States.
There has been a Dutch presence in America since 1602, when the
government of the
Republic of the Seven
United Netherlands chartered the
Dutch East India Company
(
Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) with the
mission of exploring for a passage to the
Indies and claiming any unchartered territories for
the Dutch republic.
In 1664, English troops under the command of
the Duke of York
(later
James II of England) attacked
the New Netherland colony.
Being
greatly outnumbered, director general Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam, with Fort Orange
following soon. New Amsterdam was
renamed New
York, Fort
Orange was renamed Fort
Albany.
Dutch was still spoken in many parts of New York at the time of the
Revolution. For example,
Alexander
Hamilton's wife Eliza Hamilton attended a Dutch-language church
during their marriage.
Martin Van Buren, the first
President born in the United States following its independence,
spoke Dutch as his
native language,
making him the only President whose
first
language was not English.
In a 1990 demographic consensus, 3% of surveyed citizens claimed
descent from Dutch settlers. Modern estimates place the
Dutch American population at 5 million,
lagging just a bit behind
Scottish
Americans and
Swedish
Americans.
Notable Dutch Americans include the Roosevelts (
Theodore Roosevelt,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and
Eleanor Roosevelt) Marlon Brando,
Thomas Alva Edison, Martin Van Buren and the Vanderbilts. The
Roosevelts are direct descendants of Dutch settlers of the
New Netherlands colony in the 17th
century.
Only
150,000 people in the United States still speak the Dutch language
at home today, concentrated mainly in Michigan (i.e. the city of
Holland
), Tennessee, Miami, Houston, and Chicago.
The Dutch
language is studied as a novelty in mostly Dutch communities of
Pella,
Iowa
, and San
Joaquin County, California has a renowned Dutch and Frisian settlement history since the
1840s.
A
vernacular dialect of Dutch, known as Jersey Dutch was spoken by a significant number
of people in the New
Jersey area between the start of the 17th century to the
mid-20th century. With the beginning of the 20th century,
usage of the language became restricted to internal family circles,
with an ever-growing number of people abandoning the language in
favor of English. It suffered gradual decline throughout the 20th
century, and it ultimately dissipated from casual usage.
Finnish
Finnish language distribution in the
United States.
The first Finnish settlers in America were amongst the settlers who
came from Sweden and Finland to
New
Sweden colony. Most colonists were Finnish. However, the
Finnish language was not preserved as well among subsequent
generations as Swedish.
Shortly
after the Civil War, many
Finnish citizens immigrated to the
United States, mainly in rural areas of the Midwest (and more specifically in Michigan
's Upper
Peninsula
).
Hancock,
Michigan
, as of 2005, still incorporates bi-lingual street
signs written in both English and Finnish. Americans of Finnish origin yield at
800,000 individuals, though only 39,770 speak the language at home.
There is a distinctive dialect of English to be found in the Upper
Peninsula, known as
Yooper. Yuper
often has a Finnish cadence and uses Finnish sentence structure
with modified English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish
vocabulary.Notable Finnish Americans include
Gus Hall, U.S. Communist Party leader,
Renny Harlin, film director, and the
Canadian-born actress
Pamela
Anderson.
Another Finnish community in the United
States is found in Lake Worth, Florida
, north of Miami.
French
French, the fourth most-common language, is
spoken mainly by the Louisiana
Creole, native French
, Cajun, Haitian
, and French-Canadian
populations. It is widely spoken in Maine
, New Hampshire
, and in Louisiana.
French is
the second de facto official language in the state of
Louisiana (where the French dialect of Cajun predominates). The largest
French-speaking communities in the United States reside in Northeast Maine; Hollywood
and Miami, Florida; New York
City; certain areas of rural Louisiana; and small minorities in Vermont and New
Hampshire. Many of the New England communities are connected
to the dialect found across the border in Quebec. More than 13
million Americans possess primary French heritage, but only 1.6
million speak that language at home.
German
See also: Hutterite German,
Texas German, Pennsylvania Dutchified
English, Plautdietsch.
German was a widely spoken language
in some of the colonies, especially Pennsylvania, where a number of
German-speaking religious minorities settled to escape persecution
in Europe. Dutch, Swedish, and
Scottish
Gaelic all became less common than German after the
American Revolution. Another wave of
settlement occurred when Germans fleeing the failure of 19th
Century German revolutions emigrated to the United States. Large
numbers of Germans settled throughout the U.S., especially in the
cities. Neighborhoods in many cities were German-speaking. German
farmers took up farming around the country, including the Texas
Hill Country, at this time. German was widely spoken until the
United States entered
World War I.
Numerous local German language newspapers and periodicals
existed.
German language distribution in the
United States.
In the early twentieth century, German was the most widely studied
foreign language in the United States, and prior to
World War I, more than 6% of American
school-children received their primary education exclusively in
German, though some of these Germans came from areas outside of
Germany proper. Currently, more than 49 million Americans claim
German ancestry, the largest
self-described ethnic group in the U.S., but less than 4% of them
speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2005
American Community Survey
. The
Amish speak a dialect of German known as
Pennsylvania German. In
addition to Pennsylvania, German was widely spoken in the
Midwest until the late 1950s. One reason for this
decline of German language was the perception during both World
Wars that speaking the language of the enemy was unpatriotic;
foreign language instruction was banned in places during the First
World War. Another was the demise of traditional agriculture . The
last wave of German immigration followed
World War II, as post-war Germany suffered
economic problems, and
ethnic Germans
were
uprooted from
their homes in
Eastern Europe. Unlike
earlier waves, they were more concentrated in cities, and
integrated quickly. Since the
Wirtschaftswunder, German immigration to
the U.S. has all but ended. Most
German
Americans are completely integrated into the mainstream
American society and the language is being taught less and less in
schools because of diminishing demand. However, in recent years,
immigration of highly skilled Germans to the US has picked up to
some degree.
There is a myth (known as the
Muhlenberg Vote) that German was to be the
official language of the U.S., but this is inaccurate and based on
a failed early attempt to have government documents translated into
German. The myth also extends to German being the second official
language of Pennsylvania; however, Pennsylvania has no official
language. Although more than 49 million Americans claim they have
German ancestors, only 1.38 million Americans speak German at
home.
Hebrew
Modern Hebrew is used by some immigrants from Israel and Eastern
Europe. Liturgical Hebrew is used as a religious or liturgical
language by many of the United States' approximately 7 million
Jews.
Ilocano
Like the
Tagalogs, the Ilocanos are an Austronesian stock which came from the Philippines
. They were the first
Filipinos to migrate en masse to the United
States.
They first entered the State of
Hawai'i
and worked there in the vast
plantations.
As they
did in the Philippine provinces of Northern Luzon
and
Mindanao
, they quickly gained importance in the areas
where they settled. Thus, the state of Hawai'i
became no less different from the Philippines in terms of percentage of Ilocano speakers.
Like
Tagalog,
Ilocano is also being taught in
universities where most of the
Filipinos reside.
Irish
Up to 37 million Americans have Irish ancestry, many of whose
ancestors would have spoken
Irish. it
is the 66th most spoken language in the USA, with an estimated
25,000 speakers.
Italian
Current distribution of the Italian
language in the United States.
The
Italian language and its
various
dialects has been widely
spoken in the United States for more than one hundred years,
primarily due to large-scale immigration from the late 19th century
to the mid 20th C.
In addition to Standard Italian learned by most people today, there
has been a strong representation of the dialects and languages of
Southern Italy amongst the immigrant population (
Sicilian and
Neapolitan in particular).Today, though
15,638,348 American citizens report themselves as Italian
Americans, only 1,008,370 of these report speaking the Italian
language at home (0.384% of the population).
Khmer (Cambodian)
During the
Khmer Rouge rule
of Cambodia from 1975-1979, roughly 1.7 million out of seven
million were killed. In late 1978 refugees began fleeing into
Thailand and between 1981-1985 (mostly) about 150,000 Cambodians
resettled in the United States. Before 1975 very few Cambodians
came to the United States. Those who did were children of upper
class families sent abroad to attend school.
After the fall of
Phnom
Penh
to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, some
Cambodians managed to escape. In 2000 the Census Bureau
reported that there were approximately 172,000 Cambodians living in
the United States, making up about 1.8 percent of the Asian
population. The states with the most Khmer speakers are California,
Massachusetts, Washington, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Polish
The
Polish language is very common in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chicago's largest
white ethnic group are those of Polish descent. The Polish people
and the Polish language in Chicago have been very prevalent in the
early years of the city, as well as the progression and economical
and social development of Chicago.
Poles in Chicago make up the largest
ethnically Polish population of any city outside of Poland (second
only to Warsaw
) making it one of the most important centers of
Polonia and the Polish language in the
United States, a fact that the city celebrates every Labor Day
weekend at the Taste of Polonia Festival in Jefferson
Park.
Portuguese
In the
late 19th century, many Portuguese, mainly Azorean and Madeira
, immigrated to the United States, establishing
in cities like Providence, Rhode Island
, New Bedford, Massachusetts
, and Santa Cruz, California
. Many of them also moved to Hawaii during its
independence. In the mid-late 20th century there was another
surge of Portuguese immigration in America, mainly in the Northeast
(New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts).
Many Portuguese
Americans may include descendants of Portuguese settlers born in
Africa (like Angola
, Cape
Verde
, and Mozambique
) and Asia (mostly Macau
).
There
were around 1 million Portuguese Americans in the United States by the year 2000. Portuguese (European Portuguese) has been spoken in
the United
States by small communities of immigrants, mainly in the
metropolitan New York
City area, like Newark, New Jersey
.The Portuguese language is also spoken
widely by Brazilian immigrants, established mainly in Miami
, New York City and Boston
. (
Brazilian Portuguese)
Russian
Russian language distribution in the
United States.
The
Russian language
is frequently spoken in areas of Alaska, Los
Angeles
, Seattle
, Miami, San
Francisco
, New York
City, Philadelphia
, and Chicago. The
Russian-American Company used to
own
Alaska Territory until selling
it after the
Crimean War. Russian had
always been limited, especially after the assassination of the
Romanov dynasty of
tsars.
Starting in the 1970s and continuing until
the mid 1990s, many people from the Soviet Union
and later its constituent republics such as
Russia
, Ukraine
, Belarus
, and Uzbekistan
have immigrated to the United States, increasing
the language's usage in America. The largest
Russian-speaking neighborhoods in the United States are found in
Queens
, Brooklyn
, and Staten Island
in New
York City
(specifically the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn), parts of
Los
Angeles, particularly West
Los Angeles and West Hollywood
, and parts of Miami like Sunny Isles Beach
.
Scottish Gaelic
In the
17th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of Scots from Scotland
, and Scots-Irish from
the north of Ireland arrived in the American colonies.
Today, an estimated 15 million Americans are of
Scottish ancestry.
The province of
Nova
Scotia
, Canada
was the main concentration of Scottish Gaelic speakers in North
America (Nova Scotia is Latin for New
Scotland). According to the 2000 census, 1,119 people
speak Scottish Gaelic at home.
Swedish
Swedish language distribution in the
United States.
There has been a Swedish presence in America since the
New Sweden colony came into existence in March
1638.
Widespread diaspora of Swedish immigration did not occur until the
latter half of the 19th century, bringing in a total of a million
Swedes. No other country had a higher percentage of its people
leave for the United States except Ireland and Norway.
At the beginning of
the 20th century, Minnesota
had the highest ethnic Swedish population in the
world after the city of Stockholm
.
3.7% of US residents claim descent from Scandinavian ancestors,
amounting to roughly 11-12 million people. According to SIL's
Ethnologue, over half a million ethnic Swedes still speak the
language, though according to the 2000 census only 67,655 speak it
at home.
Cultural assimilation
has contributed to the gradual and steady decline of the language
in the US.
After the independence of the US from the
Kingdom
of Great Britain
, the government encouraged colonists to adopt the
English language as a common medium of communication, and in some
cases, imposed it upon them. Subsequent generations of
Swedish Americans received education in English and spoke it as
their first language. Lutheran churches scattered across the
Midwest started abandoning Swedish in favor of English as their
language of worship. Swedish newspapers and publications alike
slowly faded away.
There are sizable Swedish communities in Minnesota, Ohio, Maryland,
Philadelphia and Delaware, along with small isolated pockets in
Pennsylvania, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, and New York. Chicago
once contained a large Swedish enclave called
Andersonville on the city's north side.
John Morton, the person who
cast the decisive vote leading to Pennsylvania's support for the
United States
Declaration of Independence, was a
Finland-Swede (Note that
Finland was still a part of Sweden in the 18th
centurary).
Tagalog
Tagalog language distribution in the
United States.
Tagalog speakers were already
present in the United States as early as the late sixteenth century
as sailors contracted by the
Spanish
colonial government.
In the eighteenth century, they established
settlements in Louisiana, such as Saint Malo
.
After the
American annexation of
the Philippines, the number of Tagalog speakers steadily
increased, as Filipinos began to migrate as students or contract
laborers. Their numbers, however, decreased upon
Philippine independence, as many
Filipinos were
repatriated.
Today, Tagalog, together with its standardized form
Filipino, is spoken by over a million
Filipino Americans, and is
promoted by Filipino American civic organizations and Philippine
consulates.
Taglish, a form of
code-switching between Tagalog and English,
is also spoken by a number of Filipino Americans.
As the
Filipinos became the second
fastest growing
Asian population in the
United States,
Tagalog easily
became the second most spoken
Asian
language in the continent. Today,
Tagalog is being majored in some
universities where a significant number of Filipinos exist.
Some of
these schools include the University of Hawaii at
Manoa
and the University of
California.
As
Tagalog is the basis of
Filipino, most of all the
Filipinos living in the United States are
proficient in
Tagalog.
Welsh
Welsh language distribution in the
United States.
Up to two million Americans are thought to have Welsh ancestry.
However, there is very little
Welsh
being used commonly in the USA. According to the
2000 U.S. Census, 2,649 people speak Welsh
at home Some place names, such as Bryn
Mawr in Chicago
and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
( ) are Welsh. Several towns in
Pennsylvania
, mostly in the Welsh
Tract, have Welsh namesakes, including Uwchlan
, Bala Cynwyd
, Gwynedd
, and Tredyffrin
.
Yiddish
Yiddish has a much longer history
in the United States than Hebrew; it has been present since at
least the late 19th century and continues to have roughly 179,000
speakers as of the 2000 census. Though they came from varying
geographic backgrounds and nuanced approaches to worship, immigrant
Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia were often united under a common
understanding of the Yiddish language once they settled in America,
and at one point dozens of publications were available in most East
Coast cities. Though it has declined by quite a bit since the end
of WWII, it has by no means disappeared. Many Israeli immigrants
and expatriates have at least some understanding of the language in
addition to Hebrew, and many of the descendants of the great
migration of
Ashkenazi Jews of the
past century pepper their mostly English vocabulary with some loan
words. Furthermore, it is definitely a lingua franca alive and well
among Orthodox Jewry, particularly in New York and Los
Angeles.
+
+
New American languages, dialects, and creoles
Several languages have developed on American soil, including
creole and
sign languages.
African American Vernacular English
African
American Vernacular English (AAVE), also known as
Ebonics, is a variety of English spoken by many
African Americans, in both rural
and urban areas. Not all African Americans speak AAVE and many
European Americans do. Indeed, it is generally accepted that
Southern American English
is part of the same continuum as AAVE.
There is considerable debate among non-linguists as to whether the
word "
dialect" is appropriate to describe
it. However, there is general agreement among linguists and many
African Americans that AAVE is part of a historical continuum
between creoles such as Gullah and the language brought by English
colonists.
Some educators view AAVE as exerting a negative influence on the
learning of Proper and Standard English, as numerous AAVE rules
differ from the rules of Standard English. Other educators,
however, propose that Standard English should be taught as a
"second dialect" in areas where AAVE is a strong part of local
tradition.
Chinuk Wawa or Chinook Jargon
Chinuk Wawa (or Chinook Jargon) is a Creole language of 700-800
words of French, English, Cree and other Native origins. It is the
old trade language of the
Pacific
Northwest. It was used extensively among both European and
Native peoples of the old Oregon Territory, even used in place of
English at home for many families.
It is estimated that around 250,000
people spoke it at its peak and it was last used Extensively in
Seattle
. The language never quite died with
'Cascadian' enthusiasts attempting to promote its usage as a street
language throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Gullah
Gullah, an English-African creole
language spoken on the Sea Islands of
South
Carolina
and Georgia
, retains strong influences of West African
languages. The language is sometimes referred to as
"Geechee".
Hawaiian Creole
Hawaiian Pidgin,
more accurately known as
Hawaiian Creoles, is
commonly used by locals and is considered an unofficial language of
the state. This not to be confused with
Hawaiian English which is standard American
English with Hawaiian words.
Outer Banks languages
In the
islands of the Outer
Banks
off North Carolina, several unique English dialects have
developed. This is evident on Harkers
Island
and Ocracoke Island
.
Sign languages
- See also: Languages
of the United States#Native American sign languages.
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
Martha's
Vineyard Sign Language is now extinct. Along with
French Sign Language, it was
one of two main contributors to American Sign Language.
American Sign Language
American Sign
Language (ASL) is the native language of between
500,000 and 2 million
Deaf people in America.
Unlike
Signed English, ASL is a
natural language in its own right, not a manual representation of
English.
Black American Sign Language
Black American Sign Language developed in segregated schools in the
south. Much like AAVE and standard English, it differs in
vocabulary and grammatical structure from ASL. Black American Sign
Language is not grammatically incorrect. It is considered a dialect
of American Sign Language, complete with its own rules for grammar,
syntax and vocabulary.
Hawaii Pidgin Sign Language
Hawaii Pidgin Sign
Language (named after Hawaiian Pidgin English, but not
itself a pidgin) is moribund.
See also
Notes
- .
- English Usage among Hispanics in the United
States
- EAC Issues Glossaries of Election Terms in Five
Asian Languages Translations to Make Voting More Accessible to a
Majority of Asian American Citizens. Election Assistance
Commission. 06/20/2008.
- Status as of April, 1998: blocked by a state judge pending
trial. The case is still pending.
- 105 ILCS 5/14C‑1 (implicit)
- New Mexico has a non-binding "English Plus" resolution,
officially endorsing multilingualism.
- California Department of Motor Vehicles Website (actual website
blocked by Wikipedia)
- http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/votingrights/vec/az_web_vec.pdf
- http://www.dmv.ca.gov/dl/dl_info.htm
- Selected Population Profile in the United States:
German, 2005 American Community Survey, U.S. Census
Bureau.
- Cambodians in the United States,
[http://www.apiahf.org/ apiahf.org.
- Population Group: Cambodian alone or in any
combination, S0201. Selected Population Profile in the United
States , U.S. Census Bureau.
Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The
historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford
University Press.
- Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). The
languages of native America: Historical and comparative
assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
* Grimes, Barbara F. (Ed.). (2000). Ethnologue: Languages of the world,
(14th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL
International. ISBN
1-55671-106-9. Online edition: http://www.ethnologue.com/,
accessed on December 7, 2004.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of native North
America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Zededa, Ofelia; Hill, Jane H. (1991). The condition of Native
American Languages in the United States. In R. H. Robins & E.
M. Uhlenbeck (Eds.), Endangered languages
(pp. 135–155). Oxford: Berg.
External links
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