Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism. Unresolved Issues онлайн

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Some might say that the increasing number of bilinguals goes hand in hand with an increase of inhabitants who know no English. The results of those who report that they do not know any English is plotted in the same graph (Figure 2.1; light grey function) and, as can be seen, the percentages remain very low throughout all these years. English is so important in the United States that close to 98.7% of the population know it, and use it in everyday life, according to the ACS results. The position of prominence that English has in the US is in no danger, but some room is now being made for other languages.

Bilingualism in the US is very diverse. English-Spanish bilinguals represent 61% of all bilinguals and hence Spanish is definitely America’s second language (41,460,427 speakers in 2018). Other important languages, but to a far lesser extent, are Chinese (3,471,604), Tagalog (1,760,468), Vietnamese (1,542,473), Arabic (1,259,118), French (1,232,173) and Korean (1,086,335). Bilinguals are not equally distributed across the nation. Some states contain proportionally very few (e.g., West Virginia, Mississippi, Montana, Kentucky) whereas others have a far greater proportion (e.g., California, Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, etc.). As for cities, the ones with the most bilinguals are Los Angeles, Houston, New York, Phoenix and Chicago.