English as the most dominant language in the United States is not in danger of being supplanted. Spanish is a distant second, based on a study by Business Insider. But the high immigration rate from Asian countries is making Asian languages more common.
The third most spoken language at home, however, has some surprises and speaks to the growing presence of Asian immigrants.
Tagalog is the third most spoken language in California is no surprise, since Filipino Americans make up the second largest Asian immigrant group in the state. Tagalog is also the third most spoken language in Nevada and New Jersey.
About 1,610,000 Filipino speakers live in the United States, with 43 % of them living in California.
Ilocano, another dialect spoken widely in the northern language, is the third most spoken language in Hawaii. Natives of the Ilocos provinces were heavily recruited to work in the pineapple and sugar cane fields in the early part of the 20th century. They eventually began bringing in family members that practice continues to this day.
What might be surprising is that Tagalog is also the fourth most spoken language in Alaska, a result of a long history of Filipinos working the cold climes of Alaska as fur traders, fisher people and cannery workers. The Filipino presence is being reinforced with the recent influx of health care workers, teachers and workers in the oil industry.
Eskimo is the third most spoken language in Alaska after English and Spanish.
Business Insider began gathering language and country-of-origen for several years from the American Community Surveys developed by the U.S. Census.
In 2019, their findings had Guajarata, a dialect spoken in India, as the thirid-most spoken language in New Jersey, The most recent survey found that Tagalog had overtaken Gujarati.
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| U.S. CENSUS BUREAU |
It is no surprise that English is the most commonly spoken language across the US with 82% of the population speaking only English.
A 2018 analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that 67.3 million residents, or about 22% of the population in the United States speak a language other than English at home, a number equal to the entire population of France.
In California, with the largest immigration population in the U.S., 44% of households speak a language other than English at home, Texas is second with 37% of its households speaking other languages besides English at home.
Other findings found Asian languages as the third most spoken language at home across the United States:
Vietnamese is the third most spoken language at home in Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska and Georgia.
Hmong is the third most spoken language in Wisconsin.
Chinese is the third most spoken language in Washington, Idaho, Wisconsin, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and New York. Business Insider did not distinguish between Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese dialects.
Studies have shown that by the third-generation, immigrant families tend to revert to English as the most frequently spoken language at home.
However the growing presence of foreign languages in certain states have forced local governments to accommodate the non-English, or limited-English-speaking population in schools and government outreach.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.
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