Since the birth of the modern human, we have been mixing and mashing cultures from all around the globe. One of the first aspects that allowed for the human to advance was a way to communicate amongst each other. The first evidence of language is dated to be from around 3500 to 2000 BCE according to chapter 2 of our textbook. Ever since then, globalization has been pulling society closer and closer together as seen in how language is becoming homogenized. Although we slowly move towards a single language, we lose another language every about every two weeks, and we are expected to lose 7,000 by the end of the century, according to UNESCO. We see the fluctuation of languages spoken in countries all the time, especially in the United States.
Every year, the English language loses some of its prowess among the other languages in the country. English has always been the most prominent language, but it was never alone. During the revolutionary period of the United States, nearly a quarter of the population spoke a language other than English. Land purchases including the Louisiana Purchase also played a role in increasing the amount of “foreign” speakers. I leave foreign in quotations as Native Americans who spoke their own languages were considered to be foreign speakers because they did not speak English. Despite this, other purchases like that of Florida greatly increased the Spanish speaking population. Along with mass migration into the United States, the country was growing linguistically diverse every year up until the 20th century.
From the 1910 census about 14.7% of the population spoke a language other than English. 1910 was arguably the year before the modern world experienced its most drastic changes. Our country fought in two world wars and went through the great depression. Due to these factors, the influx of immigrants slowed down and by the 1970 census only about 4.7% of the population spoke languages other than English. Despite this contradiction to the theme of globalization creating a diverse nation, the trend continued soon after 1970. As seen in the graphic below, by the most recent census in 2010, the percentage of non-English speakers rose back to 20.3%.
The increase of foreign languages was primarily the product of immigration from Europe. As time went on the immigration from Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries has surpassed European immigration. According to the same 2010 census, 12.6% of the entire population were Spanish speaking. Of the states in America, California leads all with an estimated 43.4% of its population speaking another language at home. Some cities, like McAllen, Texas have demographics where as much as 85.4% of the population speaks Spanish or other foreign languages.
Not only has this trend been increasing since as the 1980’s there is strong evidence that suggests the trend is going to continue. According to the U.S Census Bureau, the increase from the years 1980 to 2009 in foreign languages spoke at home had increased 148 percent.
To predict the future of our country in the near future as close as 2020, the Bureau used a logistic model to minimize any possible extrapolation. The results that came from the study were certainly interesting. To familiarize with the terms that the bureau used, LOTE speakers simply stand for Language other than English speakers. The results of the model definitely predicted that there would be more LOTE speakers by the end of the decade. But the change was not as drastic as other decades have proven to be.
To help refine the study they created three groups which were classified as high, low, and constant immigration. Despite this differentiation, all three groups were predicted to increase by the year 2020. An increase in Spanish was predicted for each group in the study, and we should expect the biggest change to be in the high immigration areas. The model predicted that the number of immigrants who spoke a LOTE in the high immigration area would increase by just under 9 million in total population. In the study, we found that even with these increases in immigrant population the percent seems to remain stagnant at about 20%. This is because both the immigrant and total population of the country in increasing.
Along with Spanish languages from around the globe including; Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Chinese, and Vietnamese, were all projected to increase their number of speakers primarily through immigration.
To be clear, the study took place in the year 2011, prior to the 2016 election of the Trump administration. It is unclear whether or not the model used had any aspect of government policy as we have seen with the Trump Administration. Chances are that the model expected the current regulations to remain constant. We are still over a year from 2020 and the next census. But it certainly will be of interest to see how accurate the projections were with regulation preventing immigration from certain countries around the globe, including Mexico.
As we can see, the dynamic of our country has been evolving since its own birth. We have seen massive increases and decreases in foreign speakers. Many of these languages including the most popular two, Spanish and Chinese, are no longer as foreign as it seems. There are millions of speakers in the same country. As we saw in the Walmart documentary, not only has language been increasing between countries such as the United States and China, but also business, which may be a cause of the language increases. These are languages that had come up on the other side of the globe thousands of years prior to today. In other words, we can clearly see the impact that globalization has in bringing societies and cultures closer together.