Voices en Español

English-only initiatives. Making English the “official” language of the United States. All of that is based on fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the future. Fear of Spanish crowding out English as the lingua franca in the U.S. because of the increasing number of Hispanic immigrants. Well, it’s a totally exaggerated and unwarranted fear. The doomsday scenario painted by some “English-only” proponents in the U.S. is unlikely to happen because the trend is moving in the opposite direction.

This week the Pew Hispanic Center released the results of a new analysis of data collected over the past decade from more than 14,000 Latino adults. According to the comprehensive survey, English fluency skyrockets between the first and third generations in the United States. While less than 23% of first-generation Hispanic immigrants say that they speak English well, the survey found that the percentage jumps to 88% for their adult children, who would represent the second generation, and hits 94% for the third generation, i.e. the grandchildren.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Rubén G. Rumbaut, a UC Irvine sociology professor, gives his take on English usage among Hispanics living in the U.S.

“People get very upset about ‘Press 2 for Spanish,’ ” he says in the piece. But “there is no way English is being threatened by immigrants. . . . The switch to English is taking place perhaps more rapidly than it has ever in American history.”

The LA Times goes on to point out that this fading out of the native language is normal among immigrant populations. Research by Prof. Rumbaut indicates that among Mexicans, 96% of the third generation living in the U.S. prefer to speak English at home, according to the article.

“Like taxes and biological death, linguistic death seems to be a sure thing in the United States, even among Mexicans living in Los Angeles,” Rumbaut’s study said.