Washington, April 30 (Inditop.com/EFE) The number of Spanish-speaking people in the US has grown by over 200 percent in the last 30 years, says a report.
The number of people aged five and above who speak a language different from English at home has more than doubled at a rate four times greater than the growth rate of the population in general, the report titled “Language Use in the United States: 2007” by the census bureau said Wednesday.
In 2007, there were 23.4 million more Spanish-speakers in the country than in 1980, a figure that represents growth of 211 percent, the report said.
From 1980 to 2007, the percentage of people who speak a language different from English at home grew about 140 percent, compared to the 34 percent rate at which the general population increased.
The states with the greatest concentrations of non-English speakers were Texas, California and New Mexico, where Spanish is widely spoken; Louisiana and Maine, where French is used, and North and South Dakota, where German is widely used.
Slavic languages are heard with more frequency in Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, while Chinese is heard in California, New York, Hawaii and Massachusetts, and Korean is spoken in Hawaii, California and New Jersey.
In all, of the 281 million people aged five and above tallied in the US in 2007, 20 percent – or 55.4 million – spoke a language other than English at home.
Sixty-two percent of those people, 34.5 million, spoke Spanish.
Among those who spoke a language other than English at home, the majority said that they knew English “very well.”
