Language Assimilation Today: Bilingualism Persists More Than in the Past, But English Still Dominates Richard Alba

Because of renewed immigration, fears about the status of English as the linguistic glue holding America together are common today. In a very different vein, multiculturalists have expressed hopes of profound change to American culture brought on by the persistence across generations of the mother tongues of contemporary immigrants. In either case, the underlying claim is that the past pattern of rapid acceptance of English by the children and grandchildren of the immigrants may be breaking down. Using 2000 Census data, the Mumford Center has undertaken an analysis of the languages spoken at home by school-age children in newcomer families in order to examine the validity of the claim. We find that, although some changes have occurred, it greatly exaggerates them. English is almost universally accepted by the children and grandchildren of the immigrants who have come to the U.S. in great numbers since the 1960s. Moreover, by the third generation, i.e., the grandchildren of immigrants, bilingualism is maintained only by minorities of almost all groups. Among Asian groups, these minorities are so small that the levels of linguistic assimilation are scarcely different from those of the past. Among the Spanish-speaking groups, the bilingua