67 million in the US don’t speak English at home
This statistic rates a big headline at Drudge today:
Nearly half of the residents in the nation’s five biggest cities do not speak English at home, choosing instead their native language, according to the latest Census Bureau data that details the impact of a decade of soft immigration policies.
Overall, a record 67 million do not speak English at home, said the bureau. That is nearly double in 27 years.
In its just-released analysis of the Census data, the Center for Immigration Studies said, “As a share of the population, 21.8 percent of U.S. residents speak a foreign language at home — roughly double the 11 percent in 1980.”
The Center added, “In America’s five largest cities, 48 percent of residents now speak a language other than English at home. In New York City and Houston it is 49 percent; in Los Angeles it is 59 percent; in Chicago it is 36 percent; and in Phoenix it is 38 percent.”
It certainly is a graphic demonstration of the increase in immigration, both legal and illegal.
But to me it’s a somewhat meaningless statistic. The far more meaningful one is not reported: what percentage of people in the US not only speak a language other than English at home, but also are not fluent in English and are not engaged in trying to be?
As far as I know, most immigrants used to speak another language at home, even a century ago. That’s why it’s called a “mother tongue.” But they, and especially their children, were forced to learn English if they wanted to function in this country, because their devotion to their original language was not indulged. They did not have access to bilingual education. They did not have translators in 50 languages at the ready. They did not have phone messages in Spanish as an alternative tongue.
I’m not saying we should go back all the way to those days. But I’ve never—even in my liberal Democrat days—been in favor of caving to the bilingualists. I definitely think people need to be nudged out of their dependence on their languages of origin. It’s tough, but it’s necessary.
I definitely think people need to be nudged out of their dependence on their languages of origin. It’s tough, but it’s necessary.
Years ago, when I was working at the County Hospital, the kids would often be the translators for the parents. At the time , my wife taught second grade in a school near the County hospital and most of her kids were Hispanic. The same thing happened with them. They would translate for the parents at parent-teacher meetings.
She also learned quickly not to say anything about kids not studying or misbehaving in class as the kid would come to school the next day black and blue.
“But I’ve never—even in my liberal Democrat days—been in favor of caving to the bilingualists.” [Neo]
I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood; my parents were bilingual Americans (although English was normally spoken at home). In my estimation even more important is attitude. Immigrants 70 years ago wanted to be seen as Americans and wanted to be Americans, bilingualism was secondary.
When my wife’s grandmother was newly in this country as a young girl she was asked why she did not wear her expensive black pearl pierced earrings that were brought from the “old country.” Her reponse: “Because they mark me as a foreigner.”
Today bilingualism is, as you put it Neo, a caving to those who migrate to this country to reap its benefits while believing, in contradiction, that the old country as we used to call it was superior and preferable
yeah… dont notice where the children of the people prior to the immigrants went to and why or ratehr what below replacement for 40 years means…
duh…
they even say on the websites and wikis they imported to replace the dying out population…
the only people who dont know it are the ones that dont bleieve it
i have no problem..
my family knows how bad people can be..
we lived through hitler, stalin and even mao…
so its not a hard leap to understand something bad from back home is bad
or didnt you ever wonder why they dont allow the same there?
oh yeah.. they just dumb mooks who hate women
move along…
Not in my father’s house!
He was 1st generation Italian & when he was a kid he asked his dad “Hey Pop, why don’t we speak Italian at home?”
My crusty grandfather said “because we’re in America and here we speak English”.
Different times, no?
Take a look at any hot spot or separatist movement around the world. With the exception of Northern Ireland, they all began with a population subset whose different but common language was tolerated by the majority population. This nurtures a sense of difference and the growth of enclaves that invariably, at some point, want their own separate government. It’s a bad, bad idea.
On the other hand, I’ve known people from Chicago who spoke Hungarian exclusively at home and in the neighborhood until they started school and had to learn English. No discernible accent at all.
Replacement migration
In demography, replacement migration is a theory of migration needed for a region to achieve a particular objective (demographic, economic or social)
Generally, studies using this concept have as an objective to avoid the decline of total population and the decline of the working-age population.
Often, these overall declines in the population are influenced by low fertility rates. When fertility is lower than the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman and there is a longer life expectancy, this changes the age structure over time.
Overall, the population will start to decline as there will not be enough children born to replace the population of people lost and the proportion of older individuals composing the population will continue to increase. One concern from this is that the age-dependency ratio will be affected, as the working-age population will have more dependents in older age to support. Therefore, replacement migration has been a proposed mechanism to try and combat declining population size, aging populations and help replenish the number of people in the working age groups.
[problem is that all the places you might want to import, went feminist, and so are also suffering below repalcement… so the only places left are the non feminist, female oppressive, and other such places… ie. bed, see bed, lie in bed of own making… ]
Replacement migration to prevent the total population decline (annual average):
Germany: 340 000 (net)
Canada: 76 000 (number of immigrants)
United States: 130 000 (net)
Europe: 1 900 000 (net)
Japan: 340 000 (net)
Quebec: 40 000 (number of immigrants)
Russia 500 000 (net)
Slovenia: 6 000 (additional immigrants relative to the reference)
Replacement migration to prevent the decline of population of working age (annual average)
Germany: 490 000 (net)
Canada: 165 000 (number of immigrants)
United States: 360 000 (net)
Europe: 3 230 000 (net)
Japan 650 000 (net)
Quebec: 70 000 (number of immigrants)
Russia: 715 000 (net)
Slovenia: 240 000 (additional immigrants relative to the reference)
So as the feminist families die out, and gay families add to that, and abortion adds to that, and infertility due to desease does it, and social changes make women hate having kids, abortion on demand and selling parts to give a reason its ok, and men hate being with women, and women hate even more being wiht men, false news about menses and menopause, articles on future parthenogenisis, and movies to make us believe what isnt real.. (the list is actually much longer)
from the same wiki page Criticism
Instead of using replacement migration to combat declining and aging populations, government policy and social changes could be implemented [you know, like the ones that made them self exterminate – but note… they are not using language of theory, they are using langauge questioning policy]
A large influx of immigrants from an area that is low or lacks resources to a country that has more resources may change the availability of resources since there will be more people. Resources could be food, water, land, energy etc. [they left out welfare, etc. so the people imported to support the elderly and dying out are now having to be supported by them too!!! (great recipe for eventually replacing the current system that is being sabotaged to prove it cant work)]
Certain countries may be opposed to international immigration. Some reasons such as wanting to maintain their country’s genetic heritage and/or their culture and to prevent an increase in violent crime from third world immigrants are few of the many reasons they oppose massive third world immigration.
everyone knows this in the sciences, and other circles
just dont let the rubes that dont believe it know
by the time the informatino is incontrovertible there will be absolutely nothng they can do, they past the event horizon and will have to die out…
why? beacuse no population without help has ever recovered from below replacement, all of them die out… without exception so far.
i guess after these people who kept the world free are exterminated through democide, political games, mental viruses in bad advice… who, would remain to challenge state slavery at a global level? islam? russia? africa? at that point, they will be able to implment the get rid of men… then women, will do ALL THE WORK ALONE… which by the way, is the theoretical mistake the egyptions, romans and any other group whose slave populatio revolted.. too many men… cant domesticate a species if there are too many men defending its independence!!!
but dont worry
they hid it well
so well, that if you dont want to know, you can call up bad math and numbers we are all normalized to accepting as valid… ignore its in percentages… and that the categories are chosen to mix them up so its hard to impossible to derive them… they did that to hide the population difference after WWI in the weimar elections… among other things you can clearly see
did you think weather was the only numbers they would play with?
Interesting. It really annoys me here in SoCal when people all around me are speaking Spanish (or a semblance of Spanish) among themselves in public places. Yet, if you address them in English, they understand and respond with very little accent. It speaks of an attitude, not necessity.
My wife points out, as though it is equivalent and relevant, that when we were in Europe, we spoke English. I rejoin, of course, that we were visitors in multiple countries, and not residents, or even citizens. If we were, I assume that we would have adopted the native language, and would have used it in public as a matter of courtesy, and would have been required to conduct official business in the language of the country.
Our government entities have caved, and offer every opportunity to conduct official business in Spanish. (I wonder how Asian and European immigrants feel about that?) There is ample evidence that bilingual policies do not promote social or political unity. Just as the Québécois beat the separatist drum periodically, other Canadians resent their insistence on being different, and being treated differently.
Pew Research
[a long time ago i said they would win, and neo asked me why… she probably doesnt remember, but i said, because for all the discussion, there is no action, and there are too many fronts in which we dont even have the wearwithal to even believe they are bad let alone confront them!!! below replacement birth and extended old age hiding democide when genocide by germans was made verboten, they had to figure out another way to use to do the same once they found out the people did not agree… remember in science a theory is established, not an idea… so below if it was an idea, it would be a hypothetica, not theory]
the numbers now are so bad that they no longer hide it, they just dont report it to you… ie. if your not curious you wont find it… which does the job of hiding when hiding is no longer capable.
Among whites, more Baby Boomers than Millennials
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/07/FT_16.7.7.GenAge2.png
Minorities in U.S. tend to be younger than whites [who are dying out – artfldgr]
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/07/FT_16.06.23_raceAge_TotalMinority.png
Youngest and oldest U.S. racial and ethnic groups
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/07/FT_16.06.23_raceAgeMedian3.png
Non-Hispanic whites, who constituted a majority (61.6%) of the U.S. population in 2015, had a median age of 43 — meaning that if you lined up all whites in the U.S. from youngest to oldest, the person in the middle would be 43 years old.
oh, ok..
the MEDIAN age thanks to the feminists and shifting births, abortions, hate children, liberation, deserases, etc.. is above fertilility… and above the level in which the odds of having children who are mental deffective is increased
could that be part of the reason most college kids now have a mental disorder as established recenty by study? and that the raise of more of this kind of thing basically parallels later pregnancy?
Median age of just 31 for minorities
The minority population grew at a faster pace (2.0%) than the white population (0.1%) during that time.
1/10 of 1%?
do we have to get to 1/1000th of 1% before the number strikes people as odd?
Minorities’ higher growth rate is expected to continue, and the minority population will likely surpass whites
and they are already hating them by being jinned up, you can finish the rest of them off for white males crimes against humanity, the races and even women!!!!
why not?
Today, Americans under the age of 5 are already “majority minority,” though by only a small margin.
using that term makes sure that when they are a majority, the actual minority wont get any of the perks minority gets from taking away from the dying majority now
and if you dont like this, just say i am a white supremicist.
what did nazis call jews that did that? oh yeah, jewish supremicist and did the whole jewish conspiracy to take over thw world… ever hear of a conspiracy of western men and imperioalists who wanted the world?
U.S. Hispanic median age was 28, and their most common age was 8
Latinos have long been one of the nation’s youngest racial/ethnic groups, dating back to at least 1980. Today, the relative youth of Hispanics is driven by the U.S.-born Latino population, nearly three-quarters of whom were Millennials or younger.
The highest shares of Asians are Millennials (27%) and Gen Xers (25%).
so i dont even know why you guys discuss this stuff
none of us are going to have lots of kids, stand up and do something, or even believe the numbers!!! so whats the point of wasting the time other than mental masturbation and playing relaxing musinc while waiting for the titanic to go under…
My fathers family came in the 1840’s from Germany to Missouri along with huge numbers of other Germans. Until WWI it was very common for kids to go to German School in the Midwest. If you were a successful politician you had to get the endorsement of the German Newspapers in your area. WWI prompted many states to push for rapid integration of German immigrants with closure of German schools and more. This plus a slowdown in new immigration make pure german towns integrate faster. The story is simply an observation of an old pattern.
On the subject of WWI, next week is the 100th Anniversary of the start of the Battle of Meuse Argonne in France. The AEF under General Pershing was entering one of the first big battles as a separate command. My Grandfather was there in the same unit as Harry Truman. So have a French 75 at the bar for all the Doughboys of the AEF!
Although I speak German, my husband and I speak English (with some German words) at home. He has to write science papers in English, so that has been very helpful in terms of expanding his vocabulary. I read and correct his papers, but now I don’t usually have to do much. I figured that early on he composed his papers in his head in German and then translated them as he typed. That led to lots of long convoluted sentences. You can’t be a scientist without speaking English.
OMT, young kids pick up languages very quickly. Old fogies like me will always make mistakes. Fortunately, my friends are tolerant. Also, I learned a lot by studying catalogues and ads when I came here. Language classes rarely deal with the vocab you need for everyday living.
I would go all the way back to complete intolerance for languages other than English in official capacities. And in schools.
Whatever language one chooses to speak at home, fluency in English is essential in American society.
When one of my grandfathers immigrated to the US from Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, he was fluent in both written and spoken English (as well as French, German and Italian, with fluency in written Latin and Greek). His American born wife was fluent in English, French and Italian (with some Latin). In their home, they spoke English, Italian and French, with the children expected to be fluent in all three languages.
“Language classes rarely deal with the vocab you need for everyday living.” [expat @ 3:57]
. . . but you will always know where the library and the train station are.
“Whatever language one chooses to speak at home, fluency in English is essential in American society.”
I agree; but I also remember a humorous example of the advantages of speaking more than one language at home– namely, specialized applications. My high school Latin teacher’s husband taught French literature at the local liberal arts college. He had a departmental colleague, Mme. Jeannet, who had been born and educated in France; her husband, born and educated in Germany, taught in the German department at the college. So my Latin teacher’s husband asked Mme. Jeannet (whose spoken English was letter-perfect with only a small trace of an accent) which language she and her husband used at home. She told him they used French in the bedroom and German for marital Auseinandersetzungen. “Don’t you ever speak English at home?” was the obvious question. “But of course!” said Mme. Jeannet. “We do the budget in English.”
PA Cat: great story. Reminiscent of the old saw about heaven and hell. Hell is the place where the politicians are French, the police German and the cooks English. Heaven is the place where the cooks are French, the politicians are German and the police English.
I grew up in New Mexico and lots of the Hispanics spoke Spanish at home. This didn’t seem to bother the girls much but lots of the boys were not proficient in either Spanish or English when they grew up.
Government policies have reduced the incentive for immigrants to transition to English. Documents are provided in the native language. Any formal proceeding will include a translator if requested, and schools offer dual track courses where core subjects are taught in the native language.
My daughter taught in a district that was probably 80% Mexican/Central American and the kids were pulled out of school enough to travel back and forth, it was difficult for them to transition to the English speaking classes.
She is now a principal in another district (which is still high minority Spanish speaking, and she chose to hire a nanny (rather than daycare) to take care of her #3 daughter, who is now two and speaks Spanish and English (like a two year old does) because the nanny only speaks Spanish. My granddaughter has compartmentalized the languages– she speaks English around her family and Spanish when with the nanny.
neo asks, “what percentage of people in the US not only speak a language other than English at home, but also are not fluent in English and are not engaged in trying to be?”
Here’s are a few clues;
“When Hispanic immigrants, who make up some 80 to 90 percent of DACA recipients, recently took an objective test of English literacy, 44 percent of those who said they speak English “well” or “very well” actually scored “below basic” — a level sometimes described as functional illiteracy. Based on test-takers with the required age and residency, I estimate that perhaps 24 percent of the DACA-eligible population fall into the functionally illiterate category and another 46 percent have only “basic” English ability.”
“The majority of foreign refugees arriving in the United States every year cannot speak English, even after they have lived in the U.S. for five years.”
“Refugees improve their English over time, but large deficits remain. Among refugees age 18 or older who have lived in the United States between 4.5 and 6.5 years, 53 percent speak English “not well” or “not at all”, based on self-assessments.”
https://www.cis.org/Richwine/Refugee-Resettlement-Costly?&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany
‘This is Hialeah!’ Taco Bell employee refuses to help client who doesn’t speak Spanish’
As the Emperor Charles V allegedly said, “I speak Latin to God, Italian to women, French to men, and to my horse: German.”
I have been sorry that my husband’s parents didn’t teach him Croation. They wanted their children to be totally American. This is a good thing, but I think children who can speak two languages have a mental advantage. Many people beyond childhood cannot learn to speak other languages well.
When we became engaged and met each other’s families, it was funny. I’d never known someone whose grandparents spoke another language as their first language, and he’d never known someone whose grandparents’ first language was English.
My daughter-in-law has told me that the worst year of her life was when she entered 3rd grade in this country, not knowing a word of English. There was no accommodation for her native language, Portuguese, but at the end of the first year, she spoke English perfectly. When I first met her, I had no idea that English wasn’t her first language. As a result, she has little sympathy for bilingual education. While 3rd grade was uncomfortable, she is also glad that as a result, she is an English speaker.
Of the many thoughts I have on this topic, the one that ticks me off, is the jury selection process in my central coast CA community. I’ve been called maybe 8 times, and been in the courtroom for the voir dire process maybe 6 times. Usually, about 25% of the people beg off from serving by proclaiming “No habla ingles.” It always works.
Now it used to be that all of the jury pool selection came from the voter registration lists. The last couple times, the officials claim that there are a couple other lists used in addition to the voter lists to produce jury lists. I wonder.
I have been sorry that my husband’s parents didn’t teach him Croation. They wanted their children to be totally American.
A friend of mine was a young physician at UC, San Francisco when he met a pretty girl in the lab. He asked her for a date. She told him her family was from “the old country” and wouldn’t let her date Americans. He asked “What old country?” She said “Croatia.” He said, “I am from Split !” They have been married 50 years. He was Nixon’s physician in San Clemente.
My daughter-in-law has told me that the worst year of her life was when she entered 3rd grade in this country, not knowing a word of English. There was no accommodation for her native language, Portuguese, but at the end of the first year, she spoke English perfectly.
I was in Catholic school in Chicago when two boys from Argentina started class. Neither spoke a word of English. By the end of the year they were fluent. Their father had been a general exiled by Peron.
Mike K, when I met my husband’s old-country Croatian grandmother, she asked politely what my ethnic ancestry is. “English, mostly,” I said. My husband tells me that if I’d said, “Serbian,” the wedding would have been off.
Two of my 3 brothers speak Spanish around the house, to make life easier for their wives, who are from Chile and Colombia. My father spoke Spanish, which he learned as a adult, as an aid to his practice of medicine. My mother’s Spanish is fluent. The brother who doesn’t speak Spanish with his wife is ‘between wives’, his first being French, but he lives (floats) in Mexico and Central America. I’m told my Spanish is ‘good, but quaint, you sound like my grandfather’, with an inexplicable Argentine accent. I’ll take that as a compliment.
Gklicker- “My daughter-in-law has told me that the worst year of her life was when she entered 3rd grade in this country, not knowing a word of English. There was no accommodation for her native language, Portuguese, but at the end of the first year, she spoke English perfectly.”
It amazes me how quickly children can learn a new language when they have to.
A number of years ago a family brought their two young daughters to my office for an eye exam prior to starting school. The girls had recently been adopted from Russia and didn’t speak a word of English. I was astonished when a year later they came in for another eye exam, and now spoke English without even a trace of an accent.
As Neo said, bilingual education does nobody any good.
I don’t look it, aside from somewhat short legs, but I’m a quarter Mexican. My grandmother on my father’s side was from Chihuahua. My grandfather was full Irish, making my father a half-breed in Santa Fe, NM. He didn’t enjoy the experience.
My father spoke Spanish and English equally well. However, he wouldn’t teach me as a child, which I regret, given how children absorb languages like leaning up against “Fresh Paint” signs and Spanish is a handy language to know these days.
But that wasn’t the style in those days. Hispanic parents wanted their children to learn English. Maybe they didn’t go so far as my father in refusing to teach Spanish, but they wanted their children to be part of America.
Geoffrey Britain on September 19, 2018 at 5:39 pm at 5:39 pm said:
— I thought of that Taco Bell story as well, having seen it recently.
Four of our 5 sons served missions in South America (2 Argentina, 1 Guatemala, 1 Brazil) so they can all talk behind my back in front of me, but one of the Argentinian sisters in our bilingual branch in Texas was always irate with the members who made no effort to learn English — it took her all of 3 months, she told me.
Oldflyer, you are kidding yourself.
Adults very rarely change their base language inside the family, and then only after many decades. I’ve known Polish dads speak Polish to their kids, in public, 60 years after leaving the homeland.
I lived in France for five years, and all the many international couples spoke their home language to their partners. Even those with excellent French. It feels forced to speak a language when you know another better. They spoke those languages outside the home too.
In all those cases the kids spoke *perfect* French. My younger daughter was better in French than English. We only had French TV and didn’t go to speciality stores to buy “home” foods etc.
But I was never going to speak anything but English to my wife and kids, despite my willingness for them to integrate as much as possible. It would have been horrible — I’d have laboured to say things that would be automatic in English. Having learned French late, my accent was terrible.
If immigrants of Spanish language origin speak perfect English, then it does not matter what they speak to each other. To expect them to change long-standing family behaviour is not going to happen.
It’s how they raise their children that really matters.
I have a very close friend who I knew for many years before learning that her first language was French, spoken in her family of origin (northern New England, where a lot of people of French Canadian origin live). She still speaks Canadian-type French fluently but very rarely.
Babel.
It is useful to divide up the nations and tribes of humanity when their linguistic thought processes become different and also incompatible.
This is total OT, but it might be good to hear some good news for a change. I just got a mail from the Boston Globe saying that the latest poll says 58% of Mass voters don’t think Warren should run for president.
@ expat – that is at least mildly encouraging.
Accents – The pivot point is around 13. If you come to America before that you will have no accent. After that, accent. This happens regardless of what is spoken at home. This proved true with my adopted sons. Henry Kissinger has a younger brother who has no accent. This is a general rule, not a universal. Also, it may not be that children are better at learning languages, though it looks that way. It may be that children are immersed, while adults have ways of “escaping” and finding people to speak their native language.
You can lose your original language, though it can be quickly regained. This happened with both my adopted sons, who took 2-3 days to adjust when they went back five years later, even though they had always spoken at least some Romanian with each other adn we had made an effort to keep them in contact with Romanian speakers. Because of Skype and FB they keep their original language more fully now. The phenomenon of speaking your childhood language, even if you had forgotten it, when you are dementing is well-known in nursing homes.
As for the joke, the more complete version is
In Heaven
All the cooks are French
All the service is Swiss
All the comedians are English
All the mechanics are German, and
All the lovers are Italian
In Hell
All the cooks are English
All the service is French
All the comedians are German
All the mechanics are Italian, and
All the lovers are Swiss.
Dreadfully unfair, I’m sure.
“Adults very rarely change their base language inside the family, and then only after many decades.”
My wife was born in the US but her first language is Hungarian, learned from her immigrant WWII refugee parents. My wife and her three siblings are all fairly fluent. But when I was dating her (we were in our 30s then) the parents spoke mostly English to their children with some miscellaneous Hungarian mixed in (even when I wasn’t in the room). When the parents wanted to exchange something in “code” in front of the children they would speak German.
But spoken Hungarian isn’t the same as it was 60 years ago. Whenever we visit Hungary, my wife notes that it can be difficult to talk with anyone much younger than her parents’ age. By now, that’s almost everyone…
When singing it is possible to eliminate the accent entirely. However, the moment someone tries to translate into language A from their language Z fluency, the accent is back. When they can learn not to think in their native language or when they can think in two languages in parallel, then they can begin to modifying their Mercury based sound communication tones.