Tuesday, April 27, 2010
[IWS] Census: LANGUAGE USE in the UNITED STATES 2007 [27 April 2010]
IWS Documented News Service
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Institute for Workplace Studies----------------- Professor Samuel B. Bacharach
School of Industrial & Labor Relations-------- Director, Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell University
16 East 34th Street, 4th floor---------------------- Stuart Basefsky
New York, NY 10016 -------------------------------Director, IWS News Bureau
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Census
American Community Survey Reports
Issued April 2010
ACS 12
Language Use in the United States: 2007 [27 April 2010]
http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/acs-12.pdf
[full-text, 16 pages]
Press Release 27 April 2010
New Census Bureau Report Analyzes Nation’s Linguistic Diversity
Population Speaking a Language Other than English at Home Increases by 140 Percent in Past Three Decades
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/014737.html
The number of people 5 and older who spoke a language other than English at home has more than doubled in the last three decades and at a pace four times greater than the nation’s population growth, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report analyzing data from the 2007 American Community Survey and over a time period from 1980 – 2007. In that time frame, the percentage of speakers of non-English languages grew by 140 percent while the nation’s overall population grew by 34 percent.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/014737.html
Spanish speakers accounted for the largest numeric increase — nationwide, there were 23.4 million more speakers in 2007 than in 1980 representing a 211 percent increase. The Vietnamese-speaking population accounted for the largest percentage increase of 511 percent (1.0 million speakers) over the same timeframe.
The new report, Language Use in the United States: 2007 [PDF], identifies the states with the highest concentrations of some of the most commonly spoken non-English languages. The languages, and some of the states with the highest percentage of speakers of these languages, include: Spanish (Texas, California and New Mexico), French (Louisiana and Maine), German (North Dakota and South Dakota), Slavic languages (Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut), Chinese (California, New York, Hawaii and Massachusetts) and Korean (Hawaii, California and New Jersey).
“The language data that the Census Bureau collects is vital to local agencies in determining potential language needs of school-aged children, for providing voting materials in non-English languages as mandated by the Voting Rights Act, and for researchers to analyze language trends in the U.S.,” said U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves.
Data on the speakers of non-English languages, as well as their English-speaking ability, routinely are used to help shape legislative, legal and marketing decisions.
Of the 281 million people 5 and older in the United States in 2007, 55.4 million individuals — or 20 percent — reported speaking a language other than English at home. While the Census Bureau codes 381 detailed languages, data tabulations generally are not available for all of those detailed groups. Instead, the Census Bureau collapses them into smaller sets of “language groups.” The simplest collapse uses four major groups: Spanish, other Indo-European languages, Asian or Pacific Island languages, and all other languages. Of those people surveyed in this report, 62 percent spoke Spanish, 19 percent spoke other Indo-European languages, 15 percent spoke an Asian or Pacific Island language, and 4 percent spoke some other language.
Among people who spoke a language other than English at home, a majority reported speaking English “very well.” The range varied from around 50 percent of the Asian or Pacific Island language speakers to 70 percent of those who spoke some other language.
The report also found:
•After English and Spanish (34.5 million speakers), Chinese (2.5 million speakers) was the language most commonly spoken at home. Five other languages have at least 1 million speakers: Tagalog (1.5 million speakers), French (1.4 million speakers), Vietnamese (1.2 million speakers), German (1.1 million speakers) and Korean (1.1 million speakers).
•The largest group of English-only speakers (78.3 million) were 41 to 64, compared with the 42.3 million speakers 5 to 17, and 72.4 million speakers aged 18 to 40 and 32.6 million speakers 65 and over.
•Among Spanish speakers, nearly as many were native-born as foreign-born — 17.0 million versus 17.5 million, respectively. This was not the case for the other three major language groups — all three were sizably more foreign-born. Also, of Spanish speakers, 53 percent reported speaking English “very well.”
•Not all languages have grown in use over the years: Italian, Yiddish, German, Polish and Greek were spoken at home by fewer individuals in the United States in 2007 than in 1980.
Also being released today are state by state and national tables, using the 2006-2008 American Community Survey multiyear data, that list every language reported by at least one person in the sample period.
The tables detail the 303 languages other than English spoken at home. Those languages include:
•134 Native American categories;
•19 African language categories;
•8 Chinese language categories;
•22 Other Asian language categories;
•39 Pacific Island language categories;
•12 Indic language categories.
The tables provide estimates of many languages that have not been published since the 2000 Census, including: Albanian, Amharic, Bengali, Cushite, Kru, Panjabi, Pennsylvania Dutch, Romanian, Serbocroatian, Tamil, Telugu and Ukrainian. A list of the tables can be found here: <http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/language/detailed-lang-tables.xls.
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Table 1. Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over for the United States: 2006-2008
Release Date: April, 2010
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/language/detailed-lang-tables.xls
[spreadsheet]
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This information is provided to subscribers, friends, faculty, students and alumni of the School of Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It is a service of the Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS) in New York City. Stuart Basefsky is responsible for the selection of the contents which is intended to keep researchers, companies, workers, and governments aware of the latest information related to ILR disciplines as it becomes available for the purposes of research, understanding and debate. The content does not reflect the opinions or positions of Cornell University, the School of Industrial & Labor Relations, or that of Mr. Basefsky and should not be construed as such. The service is unique in that it provides the original source documentation, via links, behind the news and research of the day. Use of the information provided is unrestricted. However, it is requested that users acknowledge that the information was found via the IWS Documented News Service.
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Stuart Basefsky
Director, IWS News Bureau
Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell/ILR School
16 E. 34th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Telephone: (607) 255-2703
Fax: (607) 255-9641
E-mail: smb6@cornell.edu
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