America's Most-Spoken Languages After English and Spanish
visualcapitalist.com
visualcapitalist.com
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.
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.
Top languages E.g. Alabama: English - 94% Spanish - 3% Korean - 0.22% German - 0.18%
It’s like reminding someone they shouldn’t say “bicycle” but should instead say “fahrrad”.
I am quite surprised no one is bothered by the fact that the name is that of a colonialist and slave trader (he personally took part is slave raiding).
If you asked a random person what Columbus discovered, what would they answer? Round here I think most people would say that Columbus discovered America. By landing in San Salvador and then Cuba.
By the way, I don't strongly object to people using "America" as an abbreviation for "The United States of America" in contexts in which it is obvious that a country is being referred to, and "American" is even less objectionable in an appropriate context. At the same time, "American" obviously doesn't mean "of or pertaining to the USA" if someone is talking about "American species of conifer" or "American dialects of Spanish" or "American tortilla recipes".
Do they actually know where he landed? I think that other than your Columbus example it would be very rare for people to say "America" to mean either or both continents.
Most people I know would say America for the US, North America, South America, or the Americas as appropriate. when referring to the continents.
Other than The Economist's usage, "The Americas" is used by other publications and books, its the name of a TV series, its the title of most wikipedia articles relating to the two continents.
It appears to be "open to uncertainties" but is the commoner usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas#cite_note-oxfordc-3
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.)
For example, there are spoken varieties of English that are mutually unintelligible, while speakers of different Slavic languages are often capable of having a good conversation by speaking slowly and listening carefully.
In practice the main criterion for being a language as opposed to a continuum of dialects is the degree of standardisation. So an example of something that may or may not be a language might be something like Swiss German (but I'm not an expert so I can't guarantee that's a good example). Another type of borderline case is when you have two standardised languages which differ only slightly, for example US English and GB English, or DE German and AT German.
Which? I have travelled to, worked in, or lived in multiple countries with English speaking populations (by which I mean some people speak English as a first language, though it may be a small minority) on five continents and never had a serious problem understanding people. Some slang and idiom and loan words, but thing much.
When you say you "never had a serious problem understanding people", do you mean you could understand them when you overheard them speaking to each other? Because that, of course, is the real test of how intelligible their language is to you. They may well speak a bit differently when speaking to an outsider. Also, you may be particularly skillful at understanding spoken English. I feel I have got better at understanding British dialects as I got older and gained experience of them. I was terribly confused by some dialects as a child.
With compulsory education almost everyone today has some knowledge of a standard language besides whatever dialects they have learnt. If you want to find someone who only speaks dialect X of language Y you might have to look in places where Y is neither official nor widely taught, or among very old people who never went to school.
I have heard Singaporeans, Indians and others speaking to each other and had no difficulty understanding them.
A problem I have come across in South Asia is people mixing languages. At that point are the speaking English? It can be quite disconcerting when someone changes language mid-conversation.
I have found Geordies and some Scots difficult to understand, but I think "mutually unintelligible" over stating it. There are reasons why Scots is sometimes classified as a different language. Other than that I have had difficulty with any form of British English.
Your example of Spanish and French is more accurate -- same language family, but different grammar and vocabulary.
I offer German and Dutch as another example pair -- same language family as well, but different enough that no one will say "oh they're just different dialects". Dutch is an example of what happens when a Germanic language (Low Franconian) gets it's own state.
I think you're right that Cantonese should be (and usually is) referred to as a "language" but the categories "dialect" and "language" are not mutually exclusive. For example, Dutch is both a language (for most purposes) and a dialect of West Continental Germanic (for some linguistic purposes).