Language Assimilation Today: Summary

It is inevitable to state that the United States is a nation that is culturally diverse. Even more, along with the component of culture, language stands out to be one of the most important cultural aspect that keeps communication and socialization available. As a result, “Language Assimilation Today: Bilingualism Persists More Than in the Past, But English Still Dominates” by Richard Alba discusses about the trends of assimilation by looking specifically at the 2000 Census data. The summary argues that the findings demonstrated that in second-generation children, bilingualism is prominent; whereas in the third-generation and later generations of children, English monolingualism becomes the prominent form. The study also looks at demographic trends, such as observing that although the third-generation children use more English in their lives, there are areas along the Spanish …show more content…
The differences between the percentages shows strong language assimilation patterns in more recent years. Alba explains that in second generation of English monolingualism, “In the case of Cubans, there seems to have been an increase over time in English monolingualism, which was reported for 19 percent of the second generation in 1990 and 27 percent in 2000” (9). What this demonstrates that speaking English at home has created a tendency for English language. However, the percentages are not so high that shows the existence of speaking native tongue at home as well. However, for the third generations, the percentages spiked in regards to the levels of English monolingualism. For instance, “Among the Chinese, for instance, the figure is the same in 1990 and 2000: 91 percent” (10). Even though the different annual data remains the same, it shows the vast change of language assimilation between the second generation and the third