I stand corrected. However, it’s beating English 47 to 41 as the language that is spoken at home, so Bridget’s prediction that English will be “number one” in LA in 50 years is highly doubtful unless present trends undergo a sharp reversal.
Also, that was in 2000. The proportion of Hispanics has been going up for years, but I couldn’t find a more recent cite.
Most people in the world speak a different language at home than their national language. It’s absolutely normal, sustainable and billions of people do it.
Wikipedia says multi-lingual people outnumber monolingual people. The percent I saw most often is 60-75% of the world speaks multiple languages. When you consider that that almost everyone in India* and China speaks a regional language in the home, these numbers make sense makes sense. Regional languages are also common throughout parts of Asia, most of Africa, and parts of Latin America.
Of course some percentage of this is going to be dabblers who learned another language in school, but the vast majority of bilingual people are most likely people who speak a regional language and a national language. The idea that I spoke English in my home was so inconceivable to my Cameroonian friends that they’d actually get angry when the subject came up because they thought I was making shit up.
Western Europeans and their descendants are the freaks on this one.
Note that India has like a dozen “official languages” and so please substitute “language that is widely spoken across the country” for “official language”.
An anecdote does not prove that today is different than the past. I’m sure plenty of people said the same thing in SF’s Chinatown district. It’s possible that the current wave of immigrants is somehow worse than previous waves but I have as yet seen no evidence of it.
Those who forget the past are condemned to bitch about the present.
I’m sure there have been times when the absolute majority of people in some counties spoke Pennsylvania German. This is nothing new.
Didja think Lawrence Welk was a foreigner because of his accent? He was born in 1903 in Strasburg, North Dakota, where everybody spoke German. He did not learn English until he was 21.
In 2007 the president’s Council of Economic Advisers issued a report that agrees with you. Many people make evaluations of assimilation based on superficial observations or gut reactions, or their wife’s kindergarten class. If you taught those kids when they got into high school you’d see something very different.
The report is heavily sourced. Here’s the summary:
As a matter of personal opinion, I’ve always felt that immigration is a net gain for the United States. An average immigrant is somebody who’s willing to take a risk, show some individual initiative, and change his life in pursuit of better opportunities. Those qualities are desirable traits in general. So every time an immigrant leaves his or her country and relocates to America, the other country loses and we come out ahead.
In addition there’s the environmental impact to be considered. The Colorado Basin is already being drawn dry; one need only look at projections regarding Lake Mead, which predict that the water supply intake for Las Vegas will be above the surface by 2010. Water will become a critical issue throughout the western United States in the years to come, and it’s not unreasonable to be concerned about continuing population growth, and the immigration which is the biggest factor of that growth.
What really needs to be done is that NAFTA needs to be fixed, and Mexican wages brought up closer to American and Canadian levels. That would be a true Free Trade Agreement. And, IMO, it’s a huge opportunity that was missed. Instead of helping Mexico out, the result has only been continued low-wage exploitation, which continues to drive immigration northwards.
I agree with you in most cases, but the loss of talent is definitely a problem for immigrant’s country of origin. And when that country shares a border you end up having brutal contrasts along a fence that is lined with resentment and anger. The difference in experience between entering the US at Bellingham WA and San Ysidro, CA is almost beyond description.
