Languages of the United States
Although the United States currently has no official language, English has long been the de facto national language. English is spoken by about 82% of the population as a native language and nearly everyone in the United States uses it as a daily language. On May 18, 2006 the Senate voted on an amendment to an immigration reform bill that would declare English the national language of the United States.[1] The immigration reform bill itself, S. 2611, was passed in the Senate on May 25, 2006, and now has to go back to the House of Representatives in conference to make sure amendments are agreed upon.
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 (Grimes 2000).
Spanish is taught as a second language to some extent, especially in areas with large Hispanic populations such as the states which border Mexico, as well as Florida, Illinois and New York. Younger generations of non-Hispanics seem to be learning Spanish in larger numbers, thanks 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 the U.S. the fifth-largest Spanish speaking population in the world, after Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Argentina. In the Southwestern United States bilingual signs in both English and Spanish are very common. [2]
Chinese, mostly of the Cantonese variety, is the third largest language spoken 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, though it is Standard Mandarin, the official spoken language in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan, that is mostly taught. 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.
French, the fourth largest foreign language, is spoken mainly by the small native French, Haitian or French-Canadian populations. It is widely spoken in Maine and in Louisiana, a former colony of France, where it is still used with English as the state's de facto official language. Germans, if European Americans were to be divided by national origin, would make up the largest single ethnic group in the United States. 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 die out. 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, causing Russian to become one of the minority languages in the United States.
Tagalog and Vietnamese have over one million speakers in the United States, almost entirely within recent immigrant populations.
There are also a small population of Native Americans who still speak their native languages, but these populations are dropping 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 English. All other languages besides the English language are usually learned to be spoken through immigrant descendants if not learned through some form of education. English was also introduced in what would become the United States by immigrants from England. It consequently was learned to be spoken by immigrant descendants of those people.
Official language status
The United States does not have an official language; nevertheless, English (specifically, American English) is the language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements. Additionally, one must demonstrate an ability to read, write, and speak English to become a naturalized citizen. Many individual states and territories have also adopted English as their official language:
- Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming
California, on one hand, 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(Filipino/Pilipino), Persian, Russian, Vietnamese and Thai appear in official state documents.
Several states and territories are officially bi- or trilingual:
- Hawaii (Hawaiian English and Hawaiian)
- Louisiana (English and French legally recognized, although there is no official language)
- New Mexico (English and Spanish)
- American Samoa (Samoan and English)
- Guam (Chamorro and English)
- Northern Mariana Islands (English, Chamorro, and Carolinian)
- Puerto Rico (Spanish and English)
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, the English annexed the colony in 1664.[citation needed]
Native American languages are official or co-official on many of the US 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.
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 must be made accessible to speakers of both languages. This is part of the provisions in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
The issue of bilingualism also applies in states of Arizona and Texas, while the states' constitutions have no official language policy. But historical bilingual representation existed in the Southwest states.
In 2000, the census bureau printed the standard census questionnaires in six languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (in traditional characters), Vietnamese, and Tagalog. The English-only movement seeks to establish English as the only official language of the entire nation.
On May 19, 2006, the United States Senate voted to make English the national language of the United States. According to the bill, written by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the federal government will no longer provide multilingual communications and services, except for those already guaranteed by law. Shortly after the approval of the Inhofe amendment, the Senate voted for another bill by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), according to which English is the "common unifying language of the United States," but mandated that nothing in that declaration "shall diminish or expand any existing rights" regarding multilingual services.
The impact of these bills is not immediately clear. It is also interesting to note that Inhofe switched the language from "official language" to "national language" in a last minute change. Various opposition groups, whether they are Hispanics, Asian Americans, Europeans or American Indians, the "national language" issue hits hard on the U.S.' ethnic communities, where a higher populace of bilingual speaking peoples exist.
Pre-colonial languages
American Indian 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 US (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:
178,000 speakers. Navajo is one of the Athabascan languages of the Na-Dené family. Along with the closely related Apache, the Navajo are relative newcomers to the Southwest, arriving only a few centuries before the Spanish.
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
16,000 speakers. The Yup'ik are part of the Eskimo-Aleut language family, but are not Inuit.
16,000 speakers, of the Iroquoian languagea family. The Cherokee have the largest tribal affiliation in the US, 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.
12,500 speakers. Also of the Na-Dené language family. Not mutually intelligible with Navajo, but the relationship is easy to see.
12,000 speakers. One of the Uto-Aztecan languages, along with Hopi, Comanche, Huichol, and Aztec.
| Language Spoken At Home (2000) | |
|---|---|
| English only | 82.105% |
| Spanish | 10.710% |
| Chinese (all spoken varieties incl.) | 0.771% |
| French (incl. Patois, Cajun) | 0.627% |
| German | 0.527% |
| Tagalog | 0.467% |
| Vietnamese | 0.385% |
| Italian | 0.384% |
| Korean | 0.341% |
| Russian | 0.269% |
| Polish | 0.254% |
| Arabic | 0.234% |
| Portuguese or Portuguese Creole | 0.215% |
| Japanese | 0.182% |
| French Creole | 0.173% |
| Other Indic languages | 0.167% |
| African languages | 0.160% |
| Other Asian languages | 0.152% |
| Greek | 0.139% |
| Other Indo-European languages | 0.125% |
| Hindi | 0.121% |
| Other Austronesian languages | 0.120% |
| Persian | 0.119% |
| Other Slavic languages | 0.115% |
| Urdu | 0.100% |
| Other West Germanic languages | 0.096% |
| Gujarati | 0.090% |
| Serbo-Croatian | 0.089% |
| Other Native American languages | 0.078% |
| Armenian | 0.077% |
| Hebrew | 0.074% |
| Mon, Khmer | 0.069% |
| Yiddish | 0.068% |
| Navajo | 0.068% |
| Hmong | 0.064% |
| North Germanic languages | 0.062% |
| Lao | 0.057% |
| Other and unspecified languages | 0.055% |
| Thai | 0.046% |
| Hungarian | 0.045% |
11,000 speakers. One of the Muskogean language family, like Seminole and Alabama.
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.
10,000 speakers. Zuni is a language isolate mostly spoken in a single pueblo, Zuni, the largest in the US.
7,000 speakers (about 55,000 including speakers in Canada). The Algonquian language family includes populous languages like Cree in Canada.
Other languages
Many others 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 US that are well enough 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 been spoken here for about 17,000-12,000 years, our 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, though 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 is an official state language of Hawaii as prescribed in the Constitution of Hawaii. Hawaiian has 1000 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 is an official territorial language of American Samoa. Samoans make up 90% of the population, and most people are bilingual.
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 half of the population.
Carolinian is also co-official in the Northern Marianas, where only 14% of people speak English at home.
The colonial languages
In the 17th century, there were colonies in North America, whose languages were English (from Virginia and Nova Albion colonies), Dutch (from New Netherland), French (from New France), Spanish (from New Spain), Swedish (from New Sweden), Scottish Gaelic (from Nova Scotia and Carolina), Welsh (from Welsh Tract) and Russian (from Russian-American Company).
English
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, 97% 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. Two cores of English speaking are on the Eastern Seaboard, which were the Thirteen Colonies chartered by the Virginia Company and Oregon Country, formerly called New Albion and settled from the Oregon Trail.
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.
French
French (in its Cajun variant) is the second official language in the state of Louisiana. 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 a small minorities in Vermont and New Hampshire. More than 13 million Americans possess primary French heritage, but only 1.6 million speak that language.
Welsh
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 [3]. Some place names, such as Bryn Mawr in Chicago and Pennsylvania (English: Big Hill) are Welsh. Several towns in Pennsylvania, mostly in the Welsh Tract, have Welsh namesakes, including Uwchlan, Bala Cynwyd, and Tredyffrin.
Scottish Gaelic
In the 17th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of Scots from Scotland, and Scots-Irish from Northern Ireland arrived in the American colonies. Today, an estimate of 15 million Americans are of Scottish ancestry, including self-made 19th century millionaire Andrew Carnegie. Although the use of Scottish Gaelic remains miniscule, some American linguists believe the Scottish presence has consistently created regional dialects in the Southern United States. However, the province of Nova Scotia, Canada was the main concentration of Scots Gaelic speakers in North America.
Dutch
In 1602, 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 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson attempted to find a northwest passage to the Indies, instead discovering areas of current United States and Canada, among others giving his name to the Hudson River and Hudson Bay and claiming the surrounding land for the VOC.
After some early trading expeditions, the first settlement was founded in 1615: Fort Nassau, on Castle Island, near present-day Albany. The settlement served mostly as a trade post for fur trade with the natives and was later replaced by Fort Oranje (or Fort Orange) at present-day Albany.
In 1621, a new company was established with a trading monopoly in the Americas and West Africa: the Dutch West India Company (Westindische Compagnie or WIC). The WIC sought recognition for the area in the New World - which had been called New Netherland - as a province, which was granted in 1623. Soon after, the first colonists, mostly from present-day Belgium and Germany, arrived in the new province.
In 1626, director general of the WIC Peter Minuit "purchased" the island of Manhattan from Indians and started the construction of fort New Amsterdam. In the same year, Fort Nassau was built in the New Jersey area. Other settlements were Fort Casimir (Newcastle) and Fort Beversrede (Philadelphia). In 1655, the main settlement of New Sweden, Fort Christina, was captured after the Swedes had briefly occupied Fort Casimir. Large numbers of the inhabitants of these settlements were not Dutch, but came from a variety of other European countries, including England.
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.
Martin Van Buren, the first President born in the United States (As opposed to the British colonies), spoke Dutch as his native language, making him the only President whose first language was not English.
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.
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 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt,) Marlon Brando, Thomas Alva Edison, Martin Van Buren and the Vanderbilts. It's been widely claimed the Roosevelts are direct descendants of Dutch settlers of the New Netherlands colony, now New York state in the 17th century.
Only 20,000 people in the US still speak the Dutch language today, concentrated mainly in Michigan, Tennessee, Miami, Houston, and Chicago. The Dutch language is studied as a novelty in mostly Dutch communites of Pella, Iowa, and San Joaquin County, California has a renowned Dutch and Frisian settlement history since the 1840's.
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 insurgence of people abandoning the language in favor of English. It was suffering gradual decline throughout the 20th century, and it ultimately dissipated from casual usage.
German
German was a widely spoken tongue 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. 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.[4] 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 newspaper and periodicals existed.
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 47 million Americans claim German ancestry, the largest self-described ethnic group in the U.S., and 10% of them speak or could speak the language. The Amish speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch. German was a second official language of the State of Pennsylvania and 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 the 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.
See also: Hutterite German, Texas German, Pennsylvania Dutchified English, Plautdietsch.
Swedish
New Sweden, or Nya Sverige, was a Swedish colony in North America corresponding roughly to the networked region of urban sprawl around Philadelphia, containing such settlements as New Stockholm (now Bridgeport) and Swedesboro in New Jersey, as well as others in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The colony existed from March 1638 to September 1655.
The first Swedish expedition to North America was launched from the port of Gothenburg in late 1637. Samuel Blommaert assisted with the fitting-out and appointed Peter Minuit to lead the expedition. Minuit was formerly the governor of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. The members of the expedition, traveling aboard the ships Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, arrived in Delaware Bay, a location within the territory claimed by the Dutch, in late March 1638. They built a fort on the present-day location of the city of Wilmington, which they named Fort Christina, after Queen Christina of Sweden. In the following years, approximately one thousand people from the Swedish mainland and Finland settled in the colonized establishments and townships.
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. 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. Transculture assimilation has contributed to the gradual and steady decline of the language in the US. After the independence of the US from 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 favour of English as their language of worship. Swedish newspapers and publications alike slowly faded away.
Predicted figures of citizens with direct Swedish ancestry usually remain between 5.5 million to 6 million, or 3% of the US population.
There are sizeable Swedish communities in Minnesota, Ohio, Maryland, Philadelphia and Delaware, along with small isolated pockets in Pennsylvania, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, and New York. Chicago contains a large Swedish enclave called Andersonville on the city's north side.
John Morton, the person who cast the decisive vote leading to the American Declaration of Independence, was a Swedish-speaking Finn.
Spanish
The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country, spoken by about 28.1 million people (or 10.7% of the population) in 2000. In Puerto Rico, both Spanish and English have the status of official language, and in New Mexico both languages enjoy widespread usage. The United States holds the world's fifth largest Spanish-speaking population, outnumbered only by Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is predominantly Spanish-speaking. New Spain was steadily eroded in territory by Mestizo and American forces, from the Mexican-American War to the Spanish-American War. Although many new Latin American immigrants are less than fluent in English, second-generation Hispanic Americans nearly all speak English fluently, while only about half still speak Spanish. For a detailed history, see Spanish in the United States.
Spanglish is a Dialectical variation of Spanish and English and is spoken in areas with large bilingual populations of Spanish and English speakers, such as along the U.S. - Mexico border (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), Florida, and New York City.
Russian
The Russian language is frequently spoken in areas of Alaska, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco, New York City, 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. The largest Russian-speaking neighborhoods in the United States are found in Queens and Brooklyn, in New York City (specifically the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn) and in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.
Finnish
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 [5]. Americans of Finnish origin yield at 800,000 individuals, though actual speakers range between 20,000 and 50,000. Notable Finnish-Americans include Gus Hall, US Communist Party leader, Renny Harlin, film director, and the Canadian-born actress, Pamela Anderson. Another Finnish community in the US is found in Lake Worth, Florida, north of Miami.
Immigrant languages
The U.S. has long been the destination of many immigrants. From the mid-19th century on, the nation had large numbers of residents 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, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Greek, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Czech, Japanese, Yiddish, Hebrew, Welsh, Cantonese, Bulgarian, etc., 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, various Chinese languages, Arabic, Hindi, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Typically, immigrant languages tend to be lost through assimilation within a few generations, though there are a couple groups such as the Cajuns (French), Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and the original settlers of the Southwest (Spanish) who have maintained their languages for centuries.
According to the 2000 census [6], the main immigrant/ex-colonial languages by number of speakers older than 5 are:
- 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 Dutch, Plautdietsch
- Tagalog - 1.2 million (Most Filipinos may also know other Philippine languages, e.g. Ilokano in Hawaii)
- 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
- Greek - 370,000
- Hindi - 320,000
- Persian - 310,000
- Urdu - 260,000
- Gujarati - 240,000
- Armenian - 200,000
New American languages
Several languages have been born on American soil, including creoles and sign languages.
Gullah
Gullah, an English-African creole language is spoken on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. It retains strong influences of West African languages, and is distinct enough to be considered a separate language from English. [citation needed]
African-American Vernacular
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, of course, and many Anglo-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.
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.
Sign languages
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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 100,000 and 500,000 deaf people in America. Unlike Signed English, ASL is a natural language in its own right, not a manual representation of English.
Signs are indicated by three things 1) hand shape 2) location and 3) motion. For example, a hanshape is having the index finger extended. Location is where the finger is on the signer's body, for example, an index finger touching the temple means "thinking." Motion is what the hand is doing, for example, an index finger pointed out and making a circle means "only." An index finger touching the throat and making a downward motion means "thirsty."
Sign language grammar does not usually use articles such as "an" or "the." It is a visual grammar so that a signer can indicate how high a person or thing jumped, or how fast or slow someone moved by the height or speed of the sign. An example of a sign language sentence, and the title of a book is, "Train, Go, Sorry." It is the equivalent of "you missed the boat." The English sentence "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" would be signed "lazy dog, fox, brown, quick jumped." The signer would place the dog in a spot, describe it. Then make the sign for fox and show the fox jumping over the dog.
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.
Hawaii Pidgin Sign Language
Hawaii Pidgin Sign Language (named after Hawaiian Pidgin English, but not itself a pidgin) is moribund.
Artificial languages
Esperanto
Esperanto is a constructed 'international' language, developed by L. L. Zamenhof, a Jewish-Polish occulist in Warsaw, the capital of the Russian part of partitioned Poland, and released in 1887. A nationwide organization called the Esperanto League for North America, headquartered in Emeryville, California oversees the Esperanto movement in the U.S., publishing literature, issuing a periodical, and organizing its annual conference. Smaller local groups organize meetings and annual banquets, and also host Esperanto-speaking foreign visitors.
See also
- Culture of the United States
- American English
- Bilingual education
- Language Spoken at Home (U.S. Census)
- Spanish in the United States
US related topics
External links
- Bilingualism in the United States
- Detailed List of Languages Spoken at Home for the Population 5 Years and Over by State: U.S. Census 2000
- Foreign Languages in the U.S. About foreign languages and language learning in the United States
- How many indigenous American languages are spoken in the United States? By how many speakers?
- Native Languages of the Americas
- Spanish-speaking in the U.S.
Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press.
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