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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: 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.