(Image source from: Quartz)

The number of native Telugu speakers is growing like no other in the United States, and a study by Center for Immigration Studies prove this to be literal.

Amid a period of 2010 and 2017, Telugu speakers in the U.S. surged 86 percent, which was the highest leap among the most widely spoken foreign languages in the country, among those that had more than 400,000 people speaking it.

The Telugu language is native to the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Hindi and Gujarati speakers, which are well popular Indian languages likewise clocked high growth rates.

Rise of Telugu

Earlier in 2000, the U.S. was home to just 87,543 Telugu speakers. By 2010, it elevated to 222,977.

At present, there are 415,414 Telugu speakers, according to latest figures which were found by CIS when looking at Census Bureau population data as of July 01, 2017.

Taking into consideration the monolithic representation of the south Indian diaspora in the technology and engineering spaces, the info of Telugu's increased adoption in the U.S. is not astonishing.

Telangana's capital Hyderabad is believed to send the largest number of engineers to abroad from India. Between 2008 and 2012, sent more than 26,000 students, according to a report.

Though there are galore Indian-Americans who marked as achievers, there is a dark side too.

From hate crimes to robbery attempts, a heap of Telugu workers has been shot dead in the U.S. in various incidents. On the other hand, assimilation attempts are likewise prevailing.

In the aspect of the U.S. becoming an abode for Indian immigrants progressively, Telugu is only one of the many languages from the country gaining popularity.

Other Indian languages

Other Indian language speakers, such as Bengali and Tamil have smaller populations of about 350,000 and 280,000 respectively, yet there were still among the fastest-growing ones.

Bengali speakers logged a 57 percent increase while the Tamil speaker, 55 percent.

Though Telugu might have grown at a higher pace but Hindi proceeds to remain the most widely spoken Indian language in the U.S. Although, at 863,000, it is dwarfed by the 41 million speakers of Spanish.

In outright numbers, people speaking Hindi at home increased the third-most between 2010 and 2017, after Chinese and Arabic.

CIS said, overall, 21.8 percent of the U.S. population speaks a foreign language at home. In the country's five largest cities, this share goes up abruptly to nearly half of the residents.

India, ironically, is abode to about four times more English speakers than the U.S.

-Sowmya Sangam