22% of US population does not speak English at home

[TomSea]

22% of US population does not speak English at home
by Paul Bedard  | July 24, 2018 11:10 AM



Some 13.5 percent of the U.S. population -- 44 million -- is foreign born, the highest level ever, and many are not proficient in English, choosing to speak Spanish at home instead.

A report from the Migration Policy Institute found that 22 percent of the U.S. population does not speak English at home.

The share was highest in Nevada at 31 percent and Florida at 29 percent.

Read more at: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/22-of-us-population-does-not-speak-english-at-home

Lots of graphs and more detail at the Migration Policy Institute page cited in article:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/immigrants-us-states-fastest-growing-foreign-born-populations#Languages

My personal view is that the Far Eastern Asians assimilate well and bring valuable qualities to the US. It's interesting that for example with Nevada and some other states, "German" is one of those languages that is frequently spoken at home.

[truth_seeker]

Just glancing at the poorly labeled map, it appears that North Dakota leads in something about immigrants and foreign languages.

Perhaps they speak Canadian.

[TomSea]

And ND has a small population to begin with, under a million. Oil boom hit, increased population but maybe not by that much.

Native American reservations and so on.

[ABX]

Interestingly, North Dakota's second most spoken language (even above Spanish) is German.
http://www.city-data.com/states/North-Dakota-Languages.html

[guitar4jesus]

It'd be interesting to see what the percentage was 100 years ago.

[ABX]

I'd be interesting to see what the percentage was 100 years ago.

I remember a long time ago reading an article about the Irish immigrants in the late 1800s and it was a big deal that almost half spoke Gaelic instead of English. They even had Gaelic newspapers published all over the North East.

This was also a major political issue at the turn of the century with so many opposing Chinese immigration and so few speaking English.

I suspect, if we had time for a deep dive, the language trends were far more diverse then. Politicians like to use it as a culture wedge now, but historically we probably are far more homogeneous now than we were 100 years ago.

One of the big things mentioned at the Ellis Island museum is how few immigrants spoke English and they weren't required to. The immigration questions were translated into about 40 different languages.

[darroll]

Northern Mexico or UAR?

[endicom]

"Welk was born in the German-speaking community of Strasburg, North Dakota.[2]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Welk


There have been similar areas in Texas.

[truth_seeker]

German driver Sebastian Vettel, qualified first for the German Grand Prix last Sunday driving for Ferrari.

He first thanked his team in Italian then his countrymen in German, and finally the  international viewers in English.

Smooth as could be, in a few second.

Generally speaking, native English speaking Americans aren't expected to have multilingual abilities.

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