The number of people in the United States who speak a language other than English at home tripled between 1980 and 2019, according to the US Census Bureau. Nearly 68 million people living in the US, approximately 1 in 5, speak a second language at home. That number was 23 million in 1980.
“It says what the country is known for, it’s a melting pot,” says Dina Arid, a mother of three from California who also grew up speaking Arabic at home. “So it’s good that it’s not just mainly English. There are a lot of immigrants here.”
Arabic is one of the five second most spoken languages in the US. Arid, who speaks mainly English with her children, is trying to teach them a little Arabic.
“Honestly, growing up, I had cousins who couldn’t learn Arabic like me and always, they didn’t resent their parents, but they always wished their parents would speak more Arabic to them so they would have that language,” he says.
Spanish is by far the most popular second language in the United States, with more than 41 million people, 12 times more than the other most common second languages, speaking Spanish at home. Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United States. More than half (55%) of Spanish speakers were born in the United States.
The other languages in the top five are Chinese, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
“My parents also spoke English at home, but they really tried to maintain it, like I spoke English at school during the day and at night I only spoke Vietnamese so that I could maintain the language and maintain my command and not lose it,” says Jenny Nguyen, a Virginia dental student whose parents immigrated from Vietnam. “When I was younger, I didn’t understand the importance, but I think now I’m very happy to be able to speak and write at such a proficient level.”
She was able to put her language skills to use when she traveled to Vietnam to provide free dental care to poor and underserved communities. Many of his classmates were also Vietnamese Americans.
“They couldn’t really communicate with the patients because they didn’t have that basic level of being able to speak and understand,” says Nguyen. “I was one of the few young volunteers who was able to talk to the patients and let them know what was going on.”
Speakers of Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Arabic were more likely to be naturalized US citizens than not to have US citizenship at all, according to the Census Bureau.
Raymond John “RJ” Mosuela, a Virginia health care recruiter whose parents are from the Philippines, can’t speak his native language, but says he understands when spoken to.
“Tagalog, the main dialect of the Philippines, was spoken at home but also mixed with English,” says Mosuela. “I am the youngest of three brothers. Two of my older brothers were born in the Philippines. My parents were born in the Philippines and when they came here, they had me… my mom speaks to me in Tagalog and I answer her in English.”
Passing on the native culture of their parents to their children is important to Mosuela.
“When I finally get married and have children, I may not teach the language, but at least I like to preserve the food and our own cultural traditions,” he says.
Cathy Erway, a New York-based food writer, is using a language app to try to better master her mother’s native Mandarin Chinese.
“The funny thing is that my dad, who is a white American, also speaks Chinese,” says Erway. “So, my parents spoke Chinese on their own when they didn’t want the children, my brother and I, to hear what they were saying. So, they treated it like it was a secret language.”
While more people than ever speak a second language at home, the Census Bureau reports that the number of people who only spoke English at home also increased, by about 25%, from 187 million in 1980 to 241 million in 2019. .
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