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English remains dominant language preference for immigrants to United States:
How can the Latino population be growing rapidly while Spanish-speaking remains stable? The answer lies in oft-overlooked peculiarities of census data and in the particular linguistic history of the United States.
If one looks only at immigration patterns over the past half-century, it is true that the U.S. has been gaining Spanish-speakers. From 1965 to 2015, roughly half of all immigration has come from Latin American countries. This trend added some 30 million people, most of whom came speaking Spanish, to the American populace.
But this is only half the story. While new immigrants bring Spanish with them, research shows that their children tend to become bilinguals who overwhelmingly prefer English. As a result, the same immigrants' grandchildren likely speak English only.
Linguists call this phenomenon "the three-generation pattern." In essence, it means that non-English languages in the U.S. are lost by or during the third generation.
We can see this pattern playing out in data from the Pew Hispanic Center. Surveys show that in 2000, 48 percent of Latino adults aged 50 to 68 spoke "only English" or "English very well," and that 73 percent of Latino children aged 5 to 17 did.
By 2014, those numbers had jumped to 52 percent and 88 percent, respectively. In other words, the shift from Spanish to English is happening nationwide, both over time and between generations.
If the preferred language is English, why do the immigrants refuse to understand common English terms like "taco," "burrito," "loco," and "amigo?"
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @07:59AM (9 children)
They need to practice English. Poor ability cuts them off from society.
They need to reach a level of fluency that lets them feel comfortable starting conversations. Poor skills will make them shy or worse. They need to learn proper grammar, proper pronunciation, a large vocabulary, and all sorts of cultural references that appear in common metaphors. To really succeed, their speech needs to become indistinguishable from that of a relatively upper-class educated person whose ancestors have been in the USA for 150 years.
Uh... that all assumes they have a legal right to be here. If not, it is illegal to provide aid to them (any sort of business interaction could count) and you have a duty to report them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 27 2018, @08:43AM (4 children)
They're tired, aching, and hungry. They just wanna fuckin' eat, not get an English quiz, okay? I'm not being paid to teach English, and besides which they'll be more likely to want to assimilate if they're treated well here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lester on Saturday January 27 2018, @01:02PM (2 children)
It doesn't change the fact that unless they learn to speak English as a native, they will keep tired, aching, and hungry. They want to eat, not to get an English quiz, but doing so, they are going to eat today and guarantee that tomorrow they will be tired, aching, and hungry struggling for a simple meal.
Probably they expect their kids to learn proper English to break the wheel. Unfortunately as they work a lot hours, odds are that their kids will be educated in the street.
By the way, I'm Spaniard. We have a lot of people from Morocco and other Arabian Speaking north African people, I can see that if they can' t express in Spanish, their job opportunities are... non qualified underpaid jobs.
The question is that in USA speaking Spanish is not very useful unless you are applying fro a job that needs to talk to illegals. Speaking Spanish is not something the high class is proud anymore, it's not politically correct anymore. learning Spanish is just like investing in charity, not in your career.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @01:21PM (1 child)
"not politically correct" to speak your mother tongue? Never be ashamed of who you are.
I've been trying to learn Spanish recently after I got bored of trying to learn French. It's pretty cool.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Monday January 29 2018, @09:00AM
No, I mean that, being native English speaker, learning Spanish is not politically correct anymore.
Spanish language is not any more part of a different and interesting culture anymore, it is the jive of wetbacks. So being a native Spanish speaker, speaking Spanish doesn't show you are a person with tow cultures but a wetback
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @05:49PM
Congratulations, you're part of the problem. I used to live in China. When I moved there, I could barely speak a word and couldn't read at all. That didn't stop me from being able to order off a menu within a week and within a month or two, I knew enough of the language that I could conduct at least the daily living in Mandarin.
People like you are why these immigrants ultimately don't make much progress. Why bother making progress when people are willing to accommodate.
What's more, it's primarily Spanish speakers that get these kinds of accommodations. Most other languages in the US don't get that option. Sure, there are translators for complicated things like medical appointments, but there's no reason whatsoever for immigrants to not be able to get themselves fed immediately off the boat/plane/bus/car.
And no, that's not treating them well, that's being a patronizing asshole that's trading expediency for support. It's why so many immigrants can get away with not learning the basics of the language. Nobody is asking them to become competent speech givers or be able to write poetry. Not being able to efficiently do things like order off a menu holds them back considerably. I remember even with my minimal Mandarin that everything just took a long time. It meant that I was tired and time crunched constantly, but as I got better, I wasted less time and I was able to better handle things on my own.
I wasn't moving there permanently, had I been planning on living in the PRC permanently, I would have spent even more time and energy on the language. It doesn't take that much time every day to learn the transactional language needed to conduct basic business.
What's more Spanish speakers start with a fairly large vocabulary of cognates with which to work, that I didn't have when learning Mandarin.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 27 2018, @03:55PM (3 children)
Cuts them off from what society?
Many of them probably speak better English than he does Spanish, doesn't mean they don't appreciate the respect.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @05:53PM (1 child)
It's not respect, it's patronizing. Speakers of other languages don't get treated like that. Look around at all the bilingual signs in the US, the vast majority of them are English and Spanish, even in places like the northwest where we've got other major groups of immigrants like the Africans that came fleeing war in Somalia or the various Asian immigrants. None of those groups gets routine language coddling like that.
And it's rather racist to suggest that it doesn't say something negative about perceptions of Hispanics if they're assumed to not be competent in English when they're in the US when we make that assumption about everybody else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @07:25PM
Él tiene un punto allí!
Má tam bod!
他有一個點！
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @04:41AM
The reference appears to be to Azuma Hazuki.
That soylentil is female.
Yes, there are a few here.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]