Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism - Francois Grosjean - Страница 22

I have always been fascinated by the state of bilingualism in the United States maybe because I lived there for many years and one of its eminent scholars, Einar Haugen, himself a Norwegian-English bilingual, became a close colleague and friend. As stated above, the US Census Bureau does not keep track of bilingualism as such, but ever since 1980, and annually since 2000 with the American Community Survey (ACS), three language questions are asked (see the preceding part), and they allow us to work out, to a large extent, who is bilingual and where bilinguals are situated.

The 2018 ACS found that 67.3 million inhabitants (native-born, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants) spoke a language other than English at home (Zeigler and Camarota 2019). Among those people, some 63 million also knew and used English and hence were bilingual. This represents 20.55% of the population. If we add to this number bilingual children under 5 (not covered by the survey) as well as people who use a second or third language in their everyday lives but only English at home, then probably close to 23% of the population can be considered bilingual.

The percentage of bilinguals is definitely on the rise. Researcher Jeffrey Bloem at the University of Minnesota helped me extract the appropriate numbers from the census and ACS databases. For each year, we tabulated those who spoke a language other than English, as well as English to varying degrees, and we worked out a percentage based on the total population. The results are plotted in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 The percentage of bilinguals, and of inhabitants who know no English, since 1980 in the United States.

As can be seen in the graph (dark grey function), there is a steady increase of the percentage of bilinguals between 1980 and 2018. Back in 1980, the percentage of bilinguals was 10.68% whereas in 2018, the last ACS survey for which we have data, it was 20.55%. Thus the percentage has practically doubled in 38 years. One will want to study the reasons for this constant rise since 1980. There is, of course, the arrival of new immigrants who learn English and hence become bilingual. Some maintain their languages from generation to generation and hence bilingualism continues. Other reasons may be the (re)learning of some older immigration languages, as well as of Native American languages, and of American Sign language. To these should be added the effort that is being made to allow children and adolescents to acquire and use a second language in the home, as well as more natural language learning opportunities in some schools with immersion and dual language programs.

Some might say that the increasing number of bilinguals goes hand in hand with an increase of inhabitants who know no English. The results of those who report that they do not know any English is plotted in the same graph (Figure 2.1; light grey function) and, as can be seen, the percentages remain very low throughout all these years. English is so important in the United States that close to 98.7% of the population know it, and use it in everyday life, according to the ACS results. The position of prominence that English has in the US is in no danger, but some room is now being made for other languages.

Bilingualism in the US is very diverse. English-Spanish bilinguals represent 61% of all bilinguals and hence Spanish is definitely America’s second language (41,460,427 speakers in 2018). Other important languages, but to a far lesser extent, are Chinese (3,471,604), Tagalog (1,760,468), Vietnamese (1,542,473), Arabic (1,259,118), French (1,232,173) and Korean (1,086,335). Bilinguals are not equally distributed across the nation. Some states contain proportionally very few (e.g., West Virginia, Mississippi, Montana, Kentucky) whereas others have a far greater proportion (e.g., California, Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, etc.). As for cities, the ones with the most bilinguals are Los Angeles, Houston, New York, Phoenix and Chicago.

Bilingualism in the United States has traditionally been transitional – a passage, over one or two generations, from monolingualism in a minority language to monolingualism in English. However, there is an increasing awareness that the country’s knowledge of the languages of the world is a natural resource that should not be wasted. Hence a growing number of families are fostering bilingualism either by making sure the home’s minority language and culture are kept alive or by encouraging their children to acquire and use a second language.