Spanish is the most common 2nd language spoken in most of the US. What’s the next most common language? As you might expect government, businesses and advocacy groups want to answer to this question. Where there’s interest there’s data and this being a Map Monday post, that translates into a map. The map below was created by Ben Blatt for Slate and is based on census data.
The map matches many of my experiences and expectations, with Korean in Virginia, Portuguese in Rhode Island, and Arabic in Michigan. There were some surprises too. Italian instead of German in Pennsylvania and Portuguese instead of Italian in Massachusetts? I suspect those are more a function of the places I’m familiar with in each of those states.
Other Surprises
Besides individual states I was a bit surprised by the limited number of states (only NY) where Chinese is the next most spoken language. Perhaps this is because I live in NY and know many people who speak Chineses – although Mr. Blatt offers another less anecdotal possibility. The census data is fairly specific, so responses of Chinese, Mandarin, and Cantonese, are treated as separate languages (the latter two are, but could be included in the first). So this map under-represents ethnicities with diverse languages or dialects, e.g., India.
Mr. Blatt also created other maps illustrating the most popular African, Scandinavian, and Native American languages in each state. You can find them here. His Scandinavian map shows Norwegian as the most popular of those languages in Minnesota. However Hmong is even more widely spoken in the land of 10,000 lakes. Perhaps the local football franchise should be called the Shaman rather than the Vikings.
As always, thanks for reading.
Armen
I, like you, am quite surprised that the most common language other than English in PA is not German. Why do you think that is? Would the Pennsylvania Dutch have not reported their use of German for some Reason?
I don’t know, but I can hazard a guess or two. Maybe there just aren’t as many Pennsylvania Dutch as we think. They do live in rural areas and there are other religious groups in PA that don’t use modern technology who wouldn’t speak German. Also, like the Chinese, some may have reported their language using different names, i.e., German, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, etc. Finally, the large cities (Pittsburgh & Philadelphia) dwarf the other parts of the state in population and there are a lot of Italians in those cities.