Spanish Language In The United States
The Spanish language is the second most used language in the United States. There are more Spanish speakers in the United States than there are speakers of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Hawaiian, and the Native American languages combined. According to the 2010 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by almost 37 million people aged five or older, a figure more than double that of 1990.
There are 45 million Hispanophones who speak Spanish as a first or second language, as well as six million Spanish language students, composing the largest national Spanish-speaking community outside of Mexico and making Spanish the Romance language and the Indo-European language with largest number of native speakers in the world. Roughly half of all U.S. Spanish speakers also speak English "very well", based on the self-assessment Census question respondents. The language came to the country since the 16th and 17th centuries with the arrival of Spanish colonists in areas that would later become the states of Florida, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and California. Also west of Louisiana Territory was Spanish between 1763 - 1800 (year of the French recovery of territory), after of Seven Years War. After of the incorporation of these states to the U.S. in first half of 19 century, the Spanish language was later reinforced by the acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898 and by later waves of the Hispanic emigration, basically from Hispanic America, to the United States beginning in the second half of 19th century until today. Due to its reasons, and the significant number of speakers, the Spanish language can be considered to be a national, although minority, language of the United States.
Read more about Spanish Language In The United States: History, Geographic Distribution, Current Status, Learning Trends in The United States, Variation, Common American English Words Derived From Spanish, Phonetic Features, Lexical Features, Future of Spanish in The United States, American Literature in Spanish
Famous quotes containing the words united states, spanish, language, united and/or states:
“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in action ... a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Stiller ... took part in the Spanish Civil War ... It is not clear what impelled him to this military gesture. Probably many factors were combined—a rather romantic Communism, such as was common among bourgeois intellectuals at that time.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)
“As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When some one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the United States Army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)