Compare And Contrast Bilingualism In America

568

At home and abroad, the United States is often portrayed as a monolin­ gual country where a single language, English, reigns supreme—and always has. Is the truth so simple? The selections in this chapter offer you the opportunity to learn about languages other than English in the United States through the eyes (and ears) of Americans who are bilin­ gual or who study bilingualism professionally.

The opening selection by Hyon B. Shin and Robert A. Kominski pre­ sents information from the most recent national study of language use in the United States, conducted in 2007. You’ll likely be surprised to learn how many Americans report speaking a language other than English at home as well as the percentage among them who claim to speak English very well.

The following two selections offer two very different perspectives on bilingualism with a focus on the relationship between Spanish and English. The narrator in Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Bien Pretty” argues that if you haven’t made love in Spanish with a native speaker of

What’s It Like to Be Bilingual in the United States?

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the language, you can’t imagine what you’ve missed. Marjorie Agosín, a professor, writer, human rights activist, and political refugee from Chile, explains in prose and poetry why she “writes in Spanish and lives in translation.” The fourth selection, “The ‘F Word’ ” by Firoozeh Dumas, an Iranian immigrant married to a French immigrant, examines how Americans deal and don’t deal with foreign names.

The fifth and sixth selections present public service announcements in languages other than English or in a bilingual format. These visual arguments stand as evidence that the linguistic landscape in the coun­ try isn’t monolingual while challenging you to consider the possible advantages of such announcements from the perspective of audience: the language you choose influences who likely can or can’t understand your message.

The next two selections give us insights from writers whose first lan­ guages are Vietnamese and Chinese, respectively. The protagonist in a chapter from Monkey Bridge, a novel by law professor Lan Cao, describes the situation of a refugee, an adolescent Vietnamese girl, who, because she absorbs English and comes to understand American culture easily, must parent her mother, who finds things like supermarkets disorient­ ingly foreign. Award­winning novelist Amy Tan reframes the issue of bilingualism in broader terms, focusing on the varieties of English she and her mother use.

Selections nine and ten examine bilingualism that most Americans often ignore. A transcript and video segments from Twin Cities Public Television examine the efforts of the Ojibwe community in Minnesota to bring their language back to life and ensure that it does not disappear, a struggle going on in almost all Native American communities that have not already lost their languages. In a very different context, Michele J. Bornert’s blog postings examine bilingualism—and life—for those who use American Sign Language as their primary means of interaction but who are literate in English and may have the ability to read lips or, in some cases, speak.

By examining several instances where immigrants have arrived in the United States and managed to become highly successful entrepreneurs without mastering English, Kirk Semple challenges the frequently heard claim that you have to have English to survive in the United States. At the same time, these cases are clearly exceptions that “prove the rule” in the original sense of that saying—where prove meant “try” or “test”— though in the end, the rule still stands.

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The chapter closes with Amy Martinez Starke’s obituary written for Sao Yee Cha, a Hmong woman who moved to Portland, Oregon, after two years of living in a refugee camp in Thailand, where she had fled during the Vietnam War. In describing her life, it comments on her struggles with English and reminds us that Americans who speak languages other than English came to be here in many ways.

If you grew up speaking two or more languages, these readings give you a chance to think about how your experiences compare to those of other Americans who are like you in some significant way. If you don’t already speak a second language, there’s still time: monolingualism isn’t a terminal disease, a favorite bumper sticker argues. Even as English plays an increasingly important role in the world, learning another lan­ guage changes the way you see yourself and the world. In the meantime, these readings offer you the chance to learn about the lives of a growing number of Americans—even people sitting in your classroom—that you might otherwise never know.

For additional material related to this chapter, visit the e­Pages for Everything’s an Argument with Readings online at bedfordstmartins .com/everythingsanargument/epages.

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▼ This selection, “Language Use in the United States: 2007,” is a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report written by Hyon B. Shin and Robert A. Kominski, both of whom are demographic statisticians employed by the Census Bureau. (A demographer is someone who studies the characteris- tics of populations—topics like population size and density, birth and death rates, and changes over time, using quantitative data; hence, a demographic statistician is a statistician who specializes in analyzing demographic data.) Like reports from the Census Bureau generally, this document provides the most complete and readily accessible presentation of data about some topic relating to the U.S. population. As this selection explains, the data on which this report are based come from the 2007 American Community Survey, an ongoing survey of the U.S. population that complements and supplements the U.S. census, which is conducted every ten years. The relevant questions here are those that deal with the reported use of a language other than English at home and the reported ability of individuals aged five or older to speak English. As you read this report, seek to determine the kinds of arguments it makes—factual, defini- tional, evaluative, causal, or proposal—and why. Likewise, pay attention to the information that is presented about the geographic area in which you live or areas in which you have lived. After all, the report is documenting social changes that have occurred in your lifetime.

Language Use in the United States: 2007

HYON B. SHIN AND ROBERT A. KOMINSKI

Introduction

This report provides information on the number and characteristics of people

in the United States in 2007 who spoke a language other than English at home.

While the vast majority of the population 5 years old and over in the United

States spoke only English at home (80 percent), the population speaking a lan­

guage other than English at home has increased steadily for the last three

decades. The number of speakers increased for many non­English languages,

but not all. This changing landscape of speakers of non­English languages in

the United States is highlighted in this report.

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Data from the 2007 American Community Survey (ACS) are used to describe

the language use of the U.S. population aged 5 and over. Responses to language

and English­speaking ability questions that were historically collected once

every 10 years in the decennialo census are now captured every year in the ACS.

As Appendix A (at the end of this report) shows, questions about language

have varied greatly over time. Since the 1980 decennial census, however, the

same series of three questions has been used in U.S. Census Bureau data col­

lections (see Figure 1). The first question pertains to everyone 5 years old and

over. It asks if the person speaks a language other than English at home. A

person who responds “yes” to this question is then asked to report the lan­

guage. The Census Bureau codes these responses into 381 detailed languages.

The third question asks “how well” that person speaks English, with answer

categories of “very well,” “well,” “not well,” and “not at all.”

Data on speakers of languages other than English and on their English­

speaking ability provide more than just an interesting portrait of a changing

nation. Routinely, these data are used in a wide variety of legislative, policy,

and research applications. Legal, financial, and marketing decisions regard­

ing language­based issues all rely on information that begins with data on

non­English language use and English­speaking ability.1

decennial: occurring every ten

years; the last U.S. census was

conducted in 2010.

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Table 1 provides some basic information from the 2007 ACS about speak­

ers of non­English languages and their English­speaking ability. Of 281.0 mil­

lion people aged 5 and over, 55.4 million people (20 percent of this population)

spoke a language other than English at home. While the Census Bureau codes

381 detailed languages, data tabulations are not generally available for all of

these detailed groups. Instead, the Census Bureau collapses languages into

smaller sets of “language groups.” The simplest collapse uses four major

groups: Spanish; Other Indo­European languages; Asian and Pacific Island

languages; and All Other languages. These four groups are further explained

in the text box.

Of the 55.4 million people who spoke a language other than English at

home, 62 percent spoke Spanish (34.5 million speakers), 19 percent spoke an

Other Indo­European language (10.3 million speakers), 15 percent spoke an

Asian and Pacific Island language (8.3 million speakers), and 4 percent spoke

an Other language (2.3 million speakers). The majority of speakers across all

5

Four Major Language Groups Spanish includes Spanish, Spanish Creole, and Ladino.

Other Indo-European languages include most languages of Europe and the Indic languages of India. These include the Germanic languages, such as German, Yiddish, and Dutch; the Scandinavian languages, such as Swedish and Norwegian; the Romance languages, such as French, Italian, and Portuguese; the Slavic languages, such as Russian, Polish, and Serbo­Croatian; the Indic languages, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu; Celtic languages; Greek; Baltic languages; and Iranian languages.

Asian and Pacific Island languages include Chinese; Korean; Japanese; Vietnamese; Hmong; Khmer; Lao; Thai; Tagalog or Pilipino; the Dravidian languages of India, such as Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam; and other languages of Asia and the Pacific, including the Philippine, Polynesian, and Micronesian languages.

All Other languages include Uralic languages, such as Hungarian; the Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew; languages of Africa; native North American languages, including the American Indian and Alaska native languages; and indigenous languages of Central and South America.

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four of these major language groups reported speaking English “very well.”

The percentage of these groups reporting an English­speaking ability of “very

well” ranged from around 50 percent of Asian and Pacific Island language

speakers to 70 percent of speakers in the Other language group.

People speaking at a level below the “very well” category are thought to

need English assistance in some situations.2 Around 24.5 million people

reported their English­speaking ability as something below “very well” (that

is, “well,” “not well,” or “not at all”). Higher percentages of people needing

English assistance were present for speakers of Spanish (47 percent) and

Asian and Pacific Island languages (49 percent) than among Other Indo­

European languages (33 percent) or Other languages (30 percent).

Findings

Characteristics of People Speaking a Language Other Than English at Home

While the majority of people spoke only English at home, important differ­

ences exist across some social characteristics. Figures 2a to 2c show the

number of people speaking a language other than English at home for the

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four major language groups by English­speaking ability by age, nativity,o and

educational attainment. Figure 2a shows that the group aged 41 to 64 had the

largest number of English­only speakers (78.3 million), compared to 42.3 mil­

lion speakers aged 5 to 17, 72.4 million speakers aged 18 to 40, and 32.6 mil­

lion speakers aged 65 and over. Conversely, foreign­language speakers

numbered 10.9 million (21 percent) among 5 to 17 year olds, 23.1 million (24

percent) among 18 to 40 year olds, 16.1 million (17 percent) among 41 to 64

year olds, and 5.3 million (14 percent) among older people.

Across the four major language groups, a disproportionately large number

and proportion of all people who spoke a language other than English at home

were those aged 18 to 40 who spoke Spanish. Among all 55.4 million speakers

of non­English languages, 15.3 million (28 percent) met this description.

nativity: here, place of birth—

whether born in or outside the

United States.

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About half of speakers of non­English languages also reported that they

did not speak English “very well.” The proportion of older Spanish speakers

who reported lower levels of English­speaking ability, however, was even

higher—57 percent of people 41 to 64 years old and 65 percent of Spanish

speakers 65 years old and over reported their English­speaking ability as less

than “very well.”

Figure 2b focuses on the native­born and foreign­born status of individuals.

This figure shows that among Spanish speakers, nearly as many were native

born as foreign born (17.0 million compared to 17.5 million). This is not the

case for the other three language groups—all three had more foreign born.

Spanish speakers who were foreign born were more likely to speak English

less than “very well” than native­born Spanish speakers (73 percent com­

pared to 21 percent). Among the remaining three groups, the foreign­born

Asian and Pacific Island language group was the only one where those speak­

ing English less than “very well” outnumbered those speaking “very well.”

Of those speakers of a non­English language who were foreign­born, 12.6

million were citizens and 19.3 million were noncitizens. Foreign­born Spanish

speakers were more likely to be noncitizens than any of the three other groups

(72 percent compared to 46 percent of Other Indo­European speakers, 45 per­

cent of Asian and Pacific Island speakers, and 51 percent of All Other speakers).

In addition, a much larger number and proportion of foreign­born Spanish

speakers who were not citizens reported speaking English less than “very well”

(79 percent), more than any other language group, whether citizen or not.

10

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Figure 2c shows the four major language groups and the English­speaking

ability of their members by four levels of educational attainment for the popu­

lation 25 years old and over: less than a 12th grade education, high school grad­

uate, some college experience, and a bachelor’s degree or more. Most Spanish

speakers 25 years old and over had not completed high school (41 percent)—a

larger percentage than for the other three major language groups (15 percent

for Other Indo­European language and 17 percent for both Asian and Pacific

Island language speakers and for Other language speakers). Conversely, while

the college completion level (bachelor’s degree or more) for the three non­

Spanish language groups ranged from 34 to 45 percent, only 14 percent of the

Spanish­speaking population attained this level of education.

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For all four language groups, those who had not completed high school

had larger proportions of speakers with limited English­speaking ability than

for those who reported speaking English “very well.” In addition, individuals

who were high school graduates and also spoke Asian and Pacific Island lan­

guages had a higher proportion speaking English less than “very well.”3

Languages Spoken in the United States: A Historical Look

As Appendix A shows, census questions about language have varied over the

years. In some censuses, questions were asked of “mother tongue” (the lan­

guage spoken in the household when the respondent was growing up) or

were asked only of the foreign­born population. Since the 1980 census, how­

ever, the same three questions have been asked of everyone aged 5 and over

in the household.

Table 2 provides a detailed list of 17 different languages spoken in the

home for the period 1980 to 2007.4 This list provides data for only those lan­

guages that were available in all four time periods.

Table 2 shows the growth of some languages since 1980 as well as the real

and relative decline of others. In 1980, 23.1 million people spoke a language

other than English at home, compared to 55.4 million people in 2007 (a 140

percent increase, during which the U.S. population grew 34 percent). The

largest numeric increase was for Spanish speakers (23.4 million more in 2007

than in 1980). Vietnamese speakers had the largest percentage increase (511

percent). Eight languages more than doubled during the period, including

four that had fewer than 200,000 speakers in 1980: Russian, Persian,

Armenian, and Vietnamese.

Some languages declined since 1980. Italian, the second­most frequently

spoken non­English language in 1980 (after Spanish), had a net decline of

about 800,000 speakers (50 percent decline). It is now the ninth­ranked lan­

guage on the list of languages other than English spoken at home. Other lan­

guages, such as Polish, Yiddish, and Greek, also had large proportionate

decreases. While increased immigration led to gains for some language

groups, other groups experienced aging populations and dwindling migrant

flows into the United States.

Languages Spoken in the United States

Most of the detailed language information the Census Bureau provides uses

a list of 39 individual languages and language groups. These 39 languages

and the respective English­speaking ability of their speakers are detailed in

Table 3. In 2007, seven of these languages had more than a million speakers.

15

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With 34.5 million speakers, Spanish was by far the most commonly spoken

non­English language. Chinese was the only other detailed language with at

least 2 million speakers. Even at this detailed level, however, there were still

five other specific languages with over a million speakers: French, Tagalog,

Vietnamese, German, and Korean.

The English­speaking ability of the speakers of these specific language

groups varied greatly; in some cases, certain groups reported speakers with

higher levels of English­speaking ability, while other groups had speakers

who were less adept with English. Some groups, such as Spanish, Russian,

Chinese, and Vietnamese, showed higher proportions of those speaking

English less than “very well” while other languages, such as French, German,

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Scandinavian, and Hebrew, reported higher than average levels of speaking

English “very well.”

As the number of languages spoken rises and falls over time, to some

degree these patterns reflect historical immigration and settlement patterns,

along with other unique situations. For example, English is routinely taught

in Scandinavian schools, and many speakers of Native American languages

were born and raised in the United States and have routinely interacted with

English their entire lives. Nevertheless, Table 3 demonstrates that English­

speaking ability varied widely across different language communities.

Language Concentration in States

Languages spoken at home are not evenly distributed throughout the nation.

Some areas have high percentages of speakers of non­English languages, while

others have lower levels. Table 4 shows the proportion of people who spoke a

language other than English at home across the 50 states and the District of

Columbia, as well as the English­speaking ability levels in those states.

As can be seen in Table 4 and Figure 3, the percentage of people who spoke

a language other than English at home varied substantially across states; just

2 percent of West Virginians 5 years old and over reported speaking a lan­

guage other than English at home, while 43 percent of people in California

reported the same. Moreover, Figure 3 shows that relatively high levels of

other language speakers were common in the Southwest and in the larger

immigrant gateway states of the East, such as New York, New Jersey, and

Florida. With the exception of Illinois, relatively lower levels of foreign­

language speakers prevail in most of the Midwest and in the South.

Similarly, levels of English­speaking ability were also different across

states. Figure 4 shows the percentage of foreign­language speakers who

reported their English­speaking ability was less than “very well.” In Montana,

a relatively small percentage of foreign­language speakers (19 percent)

reported having diffculty speaking English. In Arkansas, however, about half

of all people speaking another language at home (51 percent) reported they

had trouble with English.

Quite often, concentrations of specific language groups were found in cer­

tain areas of the country. In the short term, the factors creating these con­

centrations include points of entry into the United States and family

connections facilitating chain migrationo (Palloni et al. 2003).5 In the longer

term, internal migration streams, employment opportunities, and other fam­

ily situations help to facilitate the diffusion of language groups within the

country.

25 chain migration: pattern of

migration in which new immi­

grants come to a location in the

receiving country where earlier

groups of immigrants from the

same region of the home country

now live.

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Figures 5a to 5h are a series of maps that show the geographic distribution

of the most commonly spoken languages in the United States.6 These maps

show the percentage of people 5 years old and over in each state who spoke

Spanish, French, German, Slavic languages, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese,

and Tagalog.7 The intervals shown on each map are determined by dividing

the range of values for each language into four equal intervals. For Spanish

speakers, three states (Texas, California, and New Mexico)8 were in the high­

est interval, but the southwest corridor of the United States also had a siz­

able percentage of the population speaking Spanish (see Figure 5a). Louisiana

and Maine had the highest percentage of French speakers, but Florida and

many states in the Northeast had a substantial percentage as well. The pres­

ence of French Creole speakers in Louisiana and of Haitian Creole speakers in

Florida contributed to the higher levels of French speakers in these states

(see Figure 5b).

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Figure 5c shows German speakers spanning the Canadian border of the

United States, with the highest percentages in the Dakotas.9 Pennsylvania had

a sizable number of speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a West Germanic

language. Indiana, with a relatively large number of people of German ancestry,

also had a high percentage of German speakers.10 Slavic languages, which

include Russian, Polish, and Serbo­Croatian, had the highest percentage of

speakers in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.11 A substantial

level of Slavic speakers also was found in the West Coast states (see Figure 5d).

Figure 5e shows Hawaii having the highest concentration of Korean

speakers, followed by California and New Jersey. California and New York

housed the highest percentage of Chinese speakers, followed by Hawaii and

Massachusetts (see Figure 5f).

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As with Korean speakers, higher levels of Vietnamese speakers were evi­

dent throughout the country rather than a large concentration among

contiguous states. California had the highest percentage of Vietnamese

speakers, followed by Hawaii, Washington, and Texas (see Figure 5g).12

Tagalog, a language of the Philippines, had its highest percentage of speakers

in Hawaii. Alaska, California, and Nevada also had high levels, but not as high

as Hawaii.13

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Language Concentration in Metropolitan and Micropolitan Areas

Just as languages were dispersed unevenly across states, metropolitan

and micropolitan statistical areas also displayed similar effects. Large

metro areas such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago generally had large

proportions of foreign­language speakers because of the economic opportu­

nities in these places or because they act as gateway points of entry into the

30

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country. Not all of the high levels of language clustering occurred in these

three metro areas, however. Table 5 presents the metro or micro areas in

which 30 of the 39 detailed languages had the largest number of speakers.14

As Table 5 shows, some languages were widely distributed across areas,

while other languages had a large proportion of their speakers in just one or

two areas. Of these languages, Yiddish is an extreme example of language

concentration—76 percent of all its speakers lived in the New York metro

area, with another 6 percent in the Poughkeepsie metro area, 4 percent in the

Miami metro area, and 2 percent in the Los Angeles metro area. This means

that 88 percent of all Yiddish speakers lived in just one of these four metro

areas. The remaining 12 percent of Yiddish speakers were spread throughout

the rest of the country.

In other similar cases, the two or three largest concentrations account

for a large overall proportion of the total number of speakers. Polish, for

example, had 31 percent of its speakers in the Chicago metro area, with

another 23 percent in the New York metro area. Among Hmong speakers,

the Minneapolis­St. Paul (25 percent), Sacramento (13 percent), and Fresno

(12 percent) metro areas accounted for half of all speakers of this language

in the United States.15

By contrast, speakers of Laotian were much more widely dispersed through­

out the country. The Minneapolis­St. Paul, Fresno, Nashville, and Los Angeles

metro areas each had about 5 percent of all Laotian speakers, leaving the

remaining 81 percent of speakers spread throughout the rest of the country.

This high degree of dispersion was actually more common among lan­

guages that have long been a part of the nation’s history. German, a language

spoken by many immigrants to the United States over the last few centuries,

was highly dispersed. The four largest concentrations in the United States

account for just 15 percent of all German speakers in the country. Similar

high levels of dispersion are seen for languages such as French (77 percent

outside the four largest metro concentrations) and Scandinavian languages

(79 percent).

Summary

This report provides illustrative evidence of the continuing and growing role

of non­English languages as part of the national fabric. Fueled by both long­

term historic immigration patterns and more recent ones, the language

diversity of the country has increased over the past few decades. As the

nation continues to be a destination for people from other lands, this pattern

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of language diversity will also likely continue. Given the patterns of location

and relocation over time, local areas may see specific or diverse changes in

the languages spoken in any given locality.

Source of the Data and Accuracy of the Estimates

The American Community Survey

Many of the findings presented in this report were based on the American

Community Survey (ACS) data collected in 2007. These data were based on the

population living in either households or group quarters (which include cor­

rectional facilities, nursing homes, college dormitories, group homes, and over­

night shelters) that were included in the ACS sample. The U.S. Census Bureau is

both the sponsor and the collector of the American Community Survey.

The 2007 ACS is based on a sample of just under 3 million housing unit

addresses and a separate sample of just under 200 thousand people living in

group quarters. ACS figures are estimates based on this sample and approxi­

mate the actual figures that would have been obtained by interviewing the

entire household and group quarters populations using the same methodol­

ogy. The estimates from the 2007 ACS sample may also differ from estimates

based on other survey samples of housing units and group quarters and the

people living within those housing units and group quarters.

The Decennial Census

Other findings presented in this report that were not derived from the 2007

ACS were collected from previously published findings based on data from

each decennial census conducted by the Census Bureau since 1980. In general,

the decennial censuses collected data from the population living in house­

holds as well as those living in group quarters such as those described above.

Sampling and Nonsampling Error

Sampling error occurs when the characteristics of a sample are measured

instead of those of the entire population (as from a census). Note that sample­

based estimates will vary depending on the particular sample selected from

the population, but all attempt to approximate the actual figures. Measures of

the magnitude of sampling error reflect the variation in the estimates over all

possible samples that could have been selected from the population using the

same sampling, data collection, and processing methods.

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Estimates of the magnitude of sampling errors are provided in the form of

margins of error for all key ACS estimates included in this report. The Census

Bureau recommends that data users incorporate this information into their

analyses, as sampling error in survey estimates could impact the conclusions

drawn from the results. All comparative statements in this report have

undergone statistical testing, and comparisons are significant at the 90 per­

cent confidence levelo unless noted otherwise. This means the 90 percent

confidence interval for the difference between the estimates being compared

does not include zero.

In addition to sampling error, nonsampling errors may be introduced

during any phase of data collection or processing. For example, operations

such as editing, reviewing, or keying data from questionnaires may intro­

duce error into the estimates. The primary source of nonsampling error and

the processes instituted to control error in the 2007 ACS are described in

further detail in the 2007 ACS Accuracy of the Data document.

Title 13, U.S. Code, Section 9, prohibits the Census Bureau from publish­

ing results from which the identity of an individual survey respondent

could be determined. For more information on how the Census Bureau

protects the confidentiality of data, see the 2007 ACS Accuracy of the Data

document.