Sunday, December 02, 2007

Study: Children of Latino immigrants speaking more English, less Spanish

Here is another study proving the same thing: children of Latino immigrants use English and quickly lose Spanish fluency. This happens with every immigrant group that comes here. DP

By Mike Swift, Mercury News

mercurynews.com: The nation's Latinos are showing a "dramatic increase" in their English language ability across generations, moving from a Spanish-dominant population for immigrants, to a predominantly English-fluent population for their children, a new report shows.

The study by the Pew Hispanic Center suggests Latinos are following a similar trajectory as the last great wave of immigrants did in the early 20th Century, with the nation's largest immigrant group at the start of the 21st Century steadily assimilating into an English dominant population.

The Pew study found that while only about one in four Latino immigrants is fluent in English, nine in 10 of their children are. By the third generation in the U.S., three-quarters of Latino adults speak mainly or only English at home.

The Pew study provides a new window into the linguistic evolution of the nation's 44 million Hispanics, both native and foreign-born, and includes some data not collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.

It shows how Latino families change across the generations. About 52 percent of Hispanic immigrants speak only Spanish at home, but just 11 percent of their adult children speak only Spanish at home.

Latinos also say language is the biggest source of discrimination against them, rather than skin color, immigration status or their level of income and education.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.

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