(Image source from: indianexpress.com)

With recent reports, Hindi is regarded as the most abundantly spoken Indian language followed by Gujarati and Telugu. If the exact numbers are to be suggested, it was said that there were around 8.74 lakh Hindi speakers in the US as of July 01st, 2018. The same is believed to have been increased by 1.3% from 2017.

Over the decade, the numbers of speakers have increased by 2.65 lakhs which includes a rise of 43.5%. But, the report also suggested that in terms of the percentage increase, the same was quite outstripped by the Telugu speakers which rose from 79.5% between the years of 2010 and 2018.

According to the American Community Survey data for 2018, it showed from the reports of the US Census Bureau that around 67.3 million residents in the United States, over the age of 5 speak a different language at home other than just English.

Furthermore, it suggested that a portion of the population, around 21.9% of the population do speak a foreign language apart from English at home. The number of people speaking Bengali rose to 68% including around 3.75 lakh people which is a lot that increased over the eight year period.

The same was followed by Tamil which included 67.5% and included around 3.01 lakh people in the United States. But, the notable fact in this was the fact that people aside from India also do speak some of these languages. Like, people from Bangladesh speak Bengali and even the people from Sri Lanka do speak Tamil.

The immigration experts do suggest that the sudden spike in the Bengali speaking residents in the US could also be because of the increased flow of people into the country from Bangladesh.

On the contrary, the people speaking Telugu and Gujarati have actually dipped a bit between the year of 2017 and 2018. The Gujarati speakers in the country amounted to around 4.19 lakh which has reduced by 3.5% over the year. In addition to that, the number of Telugu speakers was also around 4 lakh which further experienced quite a drop in comparison to the year before.

But, when the figures from 2010 and 2018 are compared, there was a steep rise in the number of Telugu speakers in US from 2.23 lakh to 4 lakh mainly because of the fact that majority of the IT and tech employees come from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The downside with the US Censor Board is that they don’t provide country specific statics. So, when it came round to the Urdu and Punjabi speaking provinces, the same was attributed to hail more from Pakistan instead of India.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, they suggest that the number of people speaking a different language other than English at home in US has doubled since 1990 and has tripled since 1980. It also suggests that around 48% of the people in America’s top 5 cities speak a different language at home other than English.

When CIS further conducted a better insightful study around on the kind of languages that people speak at home aside from English, Hindi secured the fifth position with 2.65 lakh speakers. CIS has time and time suggested that immigrants learn English so as to ensure better assimilation with the culture and the crowd of the US.

English isn’t a very problematic language for majority of the Indians around which further makes it a lot easier to tackle through the shortcomings better in a different nation. It suggests that 80% of the Indians who can speak their native language can speak English quite fluently as well.

-Somapika Dutta