Census: English on Decline in USA

New data released by the U.S. Census Department show that the number of Americans who do not speak English has soared in the past ten years.

Eighteen percent of Americans do not speak English in their own homes.  By their own acknowledgement, over 17 million of these Americans do not speak English very well.  Nearly seven million speak little or no English.

These statistics come from the U.S. Census 2000 Supplementary Survey of U.S. households.  The data include only persons age five and older, and living in households.  (This excludes such housing as universities, prisons and military bases.)

The data show that the portion of Americans who speak poorly or not at all grew nearly sixty percent since 1990.  Several states saw their English-deficient population triple, including Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.  Missouri's grew nearly five fold.

Eleven millions Californians, or two out of five residents, do not speak English in their home; this population grew by more than 2.3 million.  One out of nine Californians can now understand little or no English.  Texas ranked second behind California, with over 5.4 million people who do not speak English in their homes, followed by New York (4.4 million) and Florida (3 million).  Even these numbers may reflect a serious undercount of the illegal immigrant population.

The vast majority of non-English speakers (75%) live in just seven states, Arizona, California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas and Illinois, all of which commonly taught immigrant children in foreign languages as of 1998.  (California and Arizona have since passed referenda requiring English immersion in many circumstances.)

Full ProEnglish Analysis of US Census Department Data