R.I. among states with largest percentage of foreign language speakers

THE CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION Studies reported that Rhode Island ranked among states with the largest share of foreign language speakers in 2013 at 21 percent.
THE CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION Studies reported that Rhode Island ranked among states with the largest share of foreign language speakers in 2013 at 21 percent.

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island ranked among the states with the largest share of foreign language speakers last year at 21 percent, according to a new report by the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies.
The report, based on data from the Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, shows that one in five U.S. residents over age 4 speaks a foreign language at home, and that nearly 62 million U.S. residents now speak a language other than English at home, which is an all-time high.
In addition to Rhode Island, other states with large shares of foreign-language speakers in 2013 include: California, 44 percent; New Mexico, 36 percent; Texas 35 percent; New Jersey, 30 percent; Nevada, 30 percent; New York, 30 percent; Florida, 27 percent; Arizona, 27 percent; Hawaii, 25 percent; Illinois, 23 percent; Massachusetts, 22 percent, and Connecticut, 22 percent.
In Rhode Island, the language most commonly spoken after English is Spanish at nearly 12 percent, followed by other Indo-European languages at nearly 7 percent, Asian and Pacific Island languages at 2 percent and other, less than 1 percent, according to Census Bureau data.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the number of foreign language speakers grew 2.2 million since 2010 in the United States, driven almost entirely by an increase in Spanish, Chinese and Arabic speakers.
The percentage of the U.S. population speaking a language other than English at home was 21 percent in 2013, a slight increase over 2010. In 2000, the share was 18 percent; in 1990 it was 14 percent; it was 11 percent in 1980.
Regarding school-age children ages 5 to 17, more than one in five speaks a foreign language at home – 45 percent in California and roughly one in three students in Texas, Nevada and New York.
Other findings: the largest increases from 2010 to 2013 were for speakers of Spanish (an increase of 1.4 million, 4 percent growth), Chinese (220,000, 8 percent growth), Arabic (188,000, 22 percent growth), and Urdu (50,000, 13 percent growth). Urdu is the national language of Pakistan.
Languages with more than 1 million speakers in 2013 were Spanish (38.4 million), Chinese (3 million) and Tagalog (1.6 million) – Tagalog is the national language of the Philippines.
Massachusetts was among the states with the largest percentage increases in foreign-language speakers from 2010 to 2013 at 6 percent. Other states in this category, include North Dakota, with a gain of 13 percent; Oklahoma, 11 percent; Nevada, 10 percent; and New Hampshire and Idaho, 8 percent.
States with the smallest share of foreign language speakers in 2013 were: West Virginia, 2.3 percent; Montana and Mississippi, 3.7 percent; and Vermont and Kentucky, 5 percent.
View the entire report HERE.

No posts to display