12 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 24.7 ms ] thread
Very surprised Navajo is so strong.
> Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese)

This is enough to discredit the whole infographic in my eyes. No matter what the CPC or anybody else may claim, these are distinct languages, and not dialects. Not only that, but in some of these places a lot of Chinese speak other regional Chinese languages, such as Fuzhounese, rather than Mandarin or Cantonese. (I remember a blog from twenty or so years ago by a NYC Chinatown native who mapped his building by language; something like a dozen Chinese languages were spoken by residents of that building's apartments.)

Sure. But blame the U.S. Census: the languages tracked are "Chinese", "Mandarin Chinese", and "Yue Chinese". Can't map the data they don't have.
You know there are 34 countries in America other than the United States.
It would be helpful to show n. speakers of those languages or at least grade based on % of remaining non-English, non-Spanish speakers.

My intuition is that German, for example, is much less active of a language in the US, where immigration peaked long ago, than Chinese, where immigration is active.

that's a lot more German than I would have guessed
What in the world is “other native” supposed to mean? Those languages don’t have names?
"Central Yupik" for Alaska, "Lakota" for S. Dakota
Surprised to see no Indian languages (India the country, not American Indians)
Just not in the top 3. hindi, gujarati, urdu, punjabi and tamil all appear in the data.
The three surprises for me: NV/Tagalog, AL/Korean, KY/German.

The first two are presumably recent immigration.

Kentucky in particular surprises me despite my German ancestors settling in Indiana during the 19th Century. I had assumed Kentucky had been English immigrants from colonial Virginia/Carolina.

Very surprised to see German there. Any way that I can learn more about this? Does anyone happen to have sources or links?