From Polish and Italian to Arabic and Creole

[KamaAina]

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2014/10/09/from-polish-and-italian-to-arabic-and-creole

Mahdi Abedrabbo, 18, speaks Arabic at home with his Palestinian-born parents and English at work in Corrado's Market here, where customers hailing from all over the world buy everything from fresh Italian mozzarella to Turkish tahini.

In nearby South Paterson, a mix of people from the Middle East and North Africa, including Muslims and Coptic Christians, mingle on Main Street, where many of the signs are in Arabic....

The number of people living in the U.S. who speak a language other than English at home has grown to 21 percent, or 62 million, compared with 18 percent, or 47 million, in 2000, according to census data and the American Community Survey.

The mix of languages being spoken also is changing, according to a Stateline analysis of the data: Since 2000, for example, Italian and Polish have dropped off the list of the top 10 non-English languages in common use in the U.S., while the use of Arabic and French Creole (the vast majority of U.S. speakers are from Haiti) each has surged more than 70 percent.

The sound you hear is teabaggers' heads exploding.

[calimary]

1. I find all of this rather fascinating.

Extremely illuminating to think about how our whole country is evolving.

I learned this one thing while working in radio - "there's nothing so constant as change." In THOSE days, for me anyway, that meant - don't get used to the boss you have this week. The ratings go up and down and heads roll. And one of those heads could easily be yours. Don't ever get too used to it the way it is at any given moment. Hell, the whole format might change next week, and you and everybody else will be out because they'll bring a consultant in from Baltimore or Detroit or San Francisco or some such place...

I just find it really fascinating to watch the changes - the demographic changes, the language changes, the source-country changes, it's well worth studying. Our country is a moving, changing, evolving LIVE ORGANISM. How can we know and understand our country and the overriding social conditions in which we live, unless we study this stuff and keep a very keen awareness about the components of it? These are the building-blocks of that systemic change.