Mother Tongues in America
THERE will soon be issued by the Bureau of the Census statistics concerning the mother tongue, or native language, of the foreign white stock of the United States. These figures possess a peculiar significance in that they offer us for the first time a fairly accurate picture of the ethnic composition of our foreign white stock. Of the total population of this country in 1910, 32,243,382, or a trifle more than one third, were whites of foreign parentage. The eight major mother tongue stocks, accounting for 87.5 per cent of the total, are as follows:— | Mother Tongue |
Number |
Per cent Distribution |
|---|
| English |
10,037,420 |
31.1 |
| German |
8,817,271 |
27.3 |
| Italian |
2,151,422 |
6.7 |
| Polish |
1,707,640 |
5.3 |
| Yiddish and Hebrew |
1,676,762 |
5.2 |
| Swedish |
1,445,869 |
4.5 |
| French |
1,357,169 |
4.2 |
| Norwegian |
1,009,854 |
3.1 |
| Totals |
28,203,407 |
87.5 |
| Other mother tongues |
4,039,975 |
12.5 |
| All mother tongues |
32,243,382 |
100.0 |
It is interesting to note that English or German was the ancestral language of nearly three fifths of the foreign white stock of this country. — William B. Bailey, assistant professor of political economy, Yale University, in the Independent.