Workforce Language Services

A recently released study by the Pew Hispanic Center traces language use and acquisition by immigrants and the generations that follow.  Amidst debate surrounding the English-only movement, the study shows that only first generation immigrants mostly speak and seek out services in their native languages.  The study finds that Mexicans are least likely to be conversational in English, a fact partially attributed to lower levels of education.

This and other studies also trace the loss of language across generations:

According to the Pew study, immigrants are more likely to speak English very well if they are college-educated, arrived in the U.S. as children or spent many years here.

Similar studies have also concluded that immigrants’ native languages recede over generations. Rumbaut co-wrote a study released last year that said Mexicans and Central Americans retain their language longer than Asians and white Europeans but that even among Mexicans, 96% of the third generation prefer to speak English at home.

“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.

To read more commentary on the study and its implications, click here.