Andrew Krug has sent me a link to this amazing census map from the MLA. Pick a language and find out where it's spoken, in the US as a whole or in any state. You can zoom, have it show the data by county or by zip code, and play with it in other ways I haven't tried yet. Enjoy!
Posted by languagehat at June 18, 2004 03:18 PMAbsolutely fascinating. And it sent me searching for "Tagalog", listed as the fifth most common language in the US - maybe all your readers know what it is, but I sure didn't.
Posted by: beth at June 19, 2004 11:28 AMThe most interesting thing for me is that the concentrations are almost all based on recent immigration, rather than early XXc immigration. For example, there are more concentrations of Scandinavian languages in LA than in Minnesota.
No real surprise there, since there's been several generations of assimilation.
The Southeast (esp. SC and GA) is also notably lacking in Native American speakers. Jackson did a very good job.
I don't trust the stats. Where's the Welsh-speaker I met in that Philly bar?
Posted by: Kaleboel at June 19, 2004 11:45 AMHe moved last month.
Posted by: language hat at June 19, 2004 12:15 PMYeah. Only ASL isn't included. Pissed me off.
Posted by: blaise at June 19, 2004 01:15 PMIt's a very good framework but unfortunately the data may not be reliable.
How accurate are the data? The Census 2000 data about language are based on sampling and may be somewhat different from data that would have been obtained if all the census respondents had been asked about their language use.These are not hard numbers from a mandatory census forms. As far as Armenian language is concerned, there are over 250,000 Armenians currently residing in Greater Los-Angeles area maybe even more. From my experience, 90 to 95 percent of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants who make up the overwhelming majority of the demographic are fluent in their native tongue. And this is just Los-Angeles vicinity. When other states are figured into the equation, you'd get a number which is 3 times as high as current results.
There is also the 3rd language which plays a role in skewing the percentages. For example, those Armenians who migrated to US in 70's through 80's from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Germany, et al, are likely to be fluent in Arabic or Persian. Naturally, having lived in those countries for 2 or more generations, they tend to list aforementioned languages as their second, regardless of national ties and motivations. There is a degree of assimilation, which plays a role.
On the other hand, you have those who relocated from the Republic of Armenia or other former Soviet republics. Azerbaijan and Russia are high up on that list. Naturally, those who come directly from Armenia list the second language accordingly. But anything else will give you a 50/50 split between Russian and Armenian when questionnaires are concerned.
What I'm implying is that data presented on the MLA site is two-dimensional and should be taken with a grain of salt. If I were personally invested in other communities, perhaps I could maintain that Hebrew or Korean languages had a bigger/smaller spread than presented by the map, but I stick to what I know.
A surprise for me is that "all languages other than English combined" is high throughout North Carolina. Why?
Posted by: Anton Sherwood at June 24, 2004 10:02 PM