Spanish language in the United States

Spanish
Español
Pronunciation	[espaˈɲol]
Spoken in	United States
Native speakers	37 million in the United States  (2010)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Western Gallo-Iberian Ibero-Romance West Iberian Spanish
Writing system	Spanish alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-1	es
ISO 639-2	spa
ISO 639-3	spa
Spanish language spread in the United States.

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Spanish is the second most used language in the United States. There are more Spanish speakers in the United States than there are speakers of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Hawaiian, and the Native American languages combined. According to the 2010 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by almost 37 million people aged five or older, a figure more than double that of 1990. There are 45 million Hispanophones who speak Spanish as a first or second language, as well as six million Spanish language students, composing the largest national Spanish-speaking community outside of Mexico. Roughly half of all U.S. Spanish speakers also speak English "very well", based on the self-assessment Census question respondents.

The language first came to the country as early as the 16th and 17th centuries with the arrival of Spanish colonists in areas that would later become the states of Florida, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and California. This was later reinforced by the acquisition of Puerto Rico in 1898 and by later waves of the Hispanic emigration from Mexico, Cuba, and Central America to the United States beginning in the second half of 19th century until today. Due to its history, and the significant number of speakers, the Spanish language can be considered to be a national, although minority, language of the United States.

History

See also: Hispanic Heritage Sites (U.S. National Park Service)

Spanish was the language spoken by the first permanent European settlers in North America. Spanish arrived in the territory of the contemporary United States with Ponce de León in 1513. In 1565, the Spaniards, by way of Juan Ponce de León, founded St. Augustine, Florida, and as of the early 1800s, it became the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States. The oldest city in all of the U.S. territory, as of 1898, is San Juan, capital of Puerto Rico, where Juan Ponce De León was its first governor and from where he left towards Florida seeking the fountain of youth, gold and slaves.

Historically, the Spanish-speaking population increased because of territorial annexation of lands claimed earlier by the Spanish empire and by wars with Mexico and by land purchases, while modern factors continue increasing the size of this population.

Louisiana Purchase

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, land claimed by Spain encompassed a large part of the contemporary U.S. territory, including the French colony of Louisiana that was under Spanish control from 1763 to 1800, and then part of the United States since 1803. When Louisiana was sold to the United States, its Spanish and French inhabitants became U.S. citizens, and continued to speak Spanish and French.

Annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War

In 1821, after Mexico's War of Independence from Spain, Texas was part of the United Mexican States as the state of Coahuila y Texas. A large influx of Americans soon followed, originally with the approval of Mexico's President. In 1836, the now largely "American" Texans, fought a war of independence from the central government of Mexico and established the Republic of Texas. In 1846, the Republic dissolved when Texas entered the U.S.A. as a state. Per the 1850 U.S. census, fewer than 16,000 Texans were of Mexican descent, and nearly all were Spanish-speaking people who were outnumbered (six-to-one) by English-speaking settlers (both American s and other immigrant Europeans).^{[citation needed]}

Mexico lost almost half of the northern territory gained from Spain in 1821 to the United States in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848): parts of contemporary Texas, and Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, California, Nevada, and Utah. Although the lost territory was sparsely populated, the thousands of Spanish-speaking Mexicans resultantly became U.S. citizens. The war-ending Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) does not explicitly address language.

Spanish-American War

In 1898, consequent to the Spanish-American War, the United States took control of Cuba and Puerto Rico as American territories. In 1902, Cuba became independent from the United States, while Puerto Rico became a U.S. Territory. Spanish is Puerto Rico's first language, and its citizens hold statutory U.S. citizenship.

Modern migration

The relatively recent but large influx of Spanish speakers to the United States has increased the overall total of Spanish-speakers in the country. They form majorities and large minorities in many political districts, especially in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the U.S. states bordering Mexico, and also in South Florida.

Immigration to the United States of Spanish-speaking Cubans began because of Cuba's political instability upon achieving independence. The deposition of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship and the ascension of Fidel Castro's government in 1959 increased Cuban immigration to the United States, hence there are some one million Cubans in the United States, most settled in southern and central Florida, while other Cubans live in the Northeastern United States; most are fluent in Spanish. In the city of Miami today Spanish is the first language mostly due to Cuban inmigration.

Likewise the migration of Spanish-speaking Nicaraguans also began as a result of political instability during the end of the 1970s and the 1980s. The uprising of the Sandinista revolution which toppled the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 caused many Nicaraguans to migrate particularly from those opposing the Sandinistas. Throughout the 1980s with the U.S. supported Contra War (or Contra-revolutionary war) which continued up until 1988, and the economic collapse of the country many more Nicaraguans migrated to the United States amongst other countries. The states of the United States where most Nicaraguans migrated to include Florida, California and Texas.

Many Puerto Ricans have migrated to New York City, increasing its Spanish-speaking population. Millions of Puerto Rican Americans living in the U.S. mainland are fluent in Spanish. In Hawaii, where Puerto Rican farm laborers and Mexican ranchers have settled since the late 19th century, 7.0 per cent of the islands' people are either Hispanic or Hispanophone or both.^{[citation needed]}

Current status

The Spanish-language logo of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Main article: Languages of the United States

Distribution of Hispanics in the United States in Census 2000.

Distribution of Hispanics in the United States in Census 2010.

Percent change in the Hispanic or Latino population by county: 2000 to 2010.

Origin of the largest Hispanic groups detailed by state: 2010.

In total, there were 36,995,602 people in the United States who spoke Spanish at home (12.8% of the total U.S. population). Over half of the country's Spanish speakers reside in California, Texas, and Florida alone.

See also: List of U.S. cities by Spanish-speaking population

Note: The following table uses data from the 2004 American Community Survey from the United States Census Bureau

State/Territory	Spanish-speaking population	Percentage of population
Puerto Rico	3,900,128	95.21%
New Mexico	823,352	43.27%
California	12,442,626	34.72%
Texas	7,781,211	34.63%
Arizona	1,608,698	28.00%
Nevada	445,622	19.27%
Florida	3,304,832	19.01%
New York	3,076,697	15.96%
New Jersey	1,134,033	13.89%
Illinois	1,516,560	12.70%
Colorado	545,112	12.35%
Rhode Island	100,227	9.96%
Utah	216,327	9.40%
Connecticut	308,863	9.35%
Oregon	293,840	8.47%
District of Columbia	45,023	8.24%
Idaho	103,686	7.66%
Washington	431,021	7.20%
Georgia	610,402	7.04%
Massachusetts	411,192	6.80%
Kansas	169,376	6.59%
Delaware	51,762	6.50%
North Carolina	532,553	6.45%
Nebraska	98,211	5.99%
Virginia	412,416	5.78%
Maryland	298,072	5.68%
Oklahoma	173,552	5.22%
Arkansas	116,396	4.45%
Indiana	254,219	4.32%
Wisconsin	217,550	4.18%
Wyoming	19,830	4.12%
Pennsylvania	436,254	3.72%
South Carolina	148,345	3.68%
Alaska	22,649	3.64%
Minnesota	171,042	3.55%
Iowa	97,876	3.51%
Michigan	292,996	3.10%
Tennessee	171,646	3.04%
Louisiana	106,872	2.68%
Alabama	107,806	2.50%
Missouri	129,329	2.37%
Ohio	230,467	2.15%
New Hampshire	26,607	2.14%
Kentucky	80,450	2.05%
South Dakota	14,403	1.98%
Mississippi	46,561	1.72%
Montana	13,458	1.51%
Hawaii	17,442	1.50%
North Dakota	8,853	1.48%
West Virginia	18,207	1.06%
Vermont	5,950	1.01%
Maine	12,576	1.00%

Although the United States has no official language, English is the most common. Most state and federal government agencies use English. Many states, such as California, require bilingual legislated notices and official documents, in Spanish and English, and other commonly used languages. In the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Spanish is the official and most commonly used language. Throughout the history of the Southwest United States, the controversial issues of language as part of cultural rights and bilingual state government representation has caused socio-cultural friction between Anglophones and Hispanophones. Currently, Spanish is the most widely taught second language in the United States.

California's first constitution recognized Spanish language rights:

All laws, decrees, regulations, and provisions emanating from any of the three supreme powers of this State, which from their nature require publication, shall be published in English and Spanish.

—California Constitution, 1849, Art. XI Sec. 21.

By 1870, English-speaking Americans were a majority in California; in 1879, the state promulgated a new constitution under which all official proceedings were to be conducted exclusively in English, a clause that remained in effect until 1966. In 1986, California voters added a new constitutional clause, by referendum, stating that:

English is the official language of the State of California.

—California Constitution, Art. 3, Sec. 6

Spanish remains widely spoken throughout the state, and many government forms, documents, and services are bilingual, in English and Spanish. And although all official proceedings are to be conducted in English:

A person unable to understand English who is charged with a crime has a right to an interpreter throughout the proceedings.

—California Constitution, Art. 1. Sec. 14

Arizona

Extension of Spanish in Arizona (source).

In Arizona, English is the official state language as of 2006. Historically, however, the state (like its southwestern neighbors) has had close linguistic and cultural ties with Mexico. The state outside the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was part of the New Mexico Territory until 1863, when the western half was made into the Arizona Territory. The area of the former Gadsden Purchase contained a majority of Spanish-speakers until the 1940s, although the Tucson area had a higher ratio of anglophones (including Mexican-Americans who were fluent in English).

New Mexico

Main article: New Mexican Spanish

New Mexico is commonly thought to have Spanish as an official language alongside English because of its wide usage and legal promotion of Spanish in the state; however, the state has no official language. New Mexico's laws are promulgated bilingually in Spanish and English. Although English is the state government's paper working language, much of the daily business of the government is conducted in Spanish, particularly at the local level. Spanish has been spoken in the New Mexico-Colorado border and the contemporary U.S.–Mexico border since the 16th century.

Because of its relative isolation from other Spanish speaking areas over most of its 400 year existence, New Mexico Spanish, and in particular the Spanish of northern New Mexico and Colorado has retained many elements of 16th and 17th century Spanish and has developed its own vocabulary. In addition, it contains many Nahuatl words as well as words from the Pueblo languages of the upper Rio Grande Valley, Mexican-Spanish words (mexicanismos), and borrowings from English. Grammatical changes include the loss of the second person verb form, changes in verb endings, particularly in the preterite, and partial merging of the second and third conjugations.

Texas

"No Smoking" sign in Spanish and English at the headquarters of the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin, Texas

In Texas, English is the state's de facto official language (though it lacks de jure status) and is used in government. However, the continual influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants increased the import of Spanish in Texas. Texas's counties bordering Mexico are mostly Hispanic, and consequently, Spanish is commonly spoken in the region. The Government of Texas, through Section 2054.116 of the Government Code, mandates that state agencies provide information on their websites in Spanish to assist residents who have limited English proficiency.

Puerto Rico

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico recognizes Spanish and English as official languages; Spanish is the dominant first language.

Spanish place names

Main article: List of U.S. place names of Spanish origin

Learning trends in the United States

Spanish is currently the most widely taught non-English language in U.S. secondary schools and of higher education. More than 1.4 million university students were enrolled in language courses in autumn of 2002 and Spanish is the most widely taught language in American colleges and universities with 53 percent of the total number of people enrolled, followed by French (14.4%), German (7.1%) Italian (4.5%), American Sign language (4.3%), Japanese (3.7%), and Chinese (2.4%) although the totals remain relatively small in relation to the total U.S population.

Common American English words derived from Spanish

See also List of English words of Spanish origin

Buckaroo (vaquero) Cafeteria (cafetería) Corral Chocolate (from Nahuatl xocoatl)

Desperado (desesperado) Guerrilla Enamored (enamorado) Guitar (guitarra) Junta

Aficionado Lasso ("lazo") Potato ("Patata") Ranch ("Rancho")

Rodeo Siesta Tornado Wrangler (caballerango)[citation needed]

Variation

The influence of English on American Spanish is very important. In many Latino youth subcultures, it is fashionable to variously mix Spanish and English, thereby producing Spanglish. Spanglish is the name for the admixture of English words and phrases to Spanish for effective communication.

The new generation of American Hispanics want to preserve knowing and using Spanish as equal to learning and using English. The small Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (North American Academy of the Spanish Language) tracks the developments of the Spanish spoken in the United States, and the influences of English upon it.

Language experts distinguish the following varieties of the Spanish spoken in the United States:^{[citation needed]}

• Cuban (1959-to date): Florida (especially South Florida) and New Jersey
• Colombian (second half of 20th century-to date) Florida, New Jersey and New York City, also could be presence in another states.
• Dominican (1943-to date): New York City, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia and Providence
• Salvadoran-Honduran (1598-to date): New Jersey, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York City and New Orleans
• Nicaraguan (1979-to date): Miami, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Houston
• Isleño (Islander) (18th century-to date): St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana
• Mexican (also Chicano or Tex-Mex [20th century]): the U.S.–Mexico border, from southern California to Texas to Illinois, but becoming ubiquitous throughout the continental United States
• New Mexican (1598-to date)
  • Traditional Spanish (1598-to date): Central and north-central New Mexico and south-central Colorado
  • Renovador (Renovating Spanish) (20th century): The border regions of Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado
• Puerto Rican (1898-to date): New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and other large northeastern cities, and Illinois, Orlando and Tampa
• Spanish (1939-to date): throughout the United States.

Analogously, many Spanish words now are standard American English. For a detailed list of borrowed words, see American English.

Future of Spanish in the United States

Many factors indicate that Spanish in the United States is healthy. Living an exclusively Hispanophone life is viable in some areas because of continual immigration and prevalent Spanish-language mass media, such as Univisión, Telemundo, and Azteca América.

Moreover, because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is common for many American manufacturers to use trilingual product labeling using English, French and Spanish. Besides the businesses that always have catered to Hispanophone immigrants, a small, but increasing, number of mainstream American retailers now advertise bilingually in Spanish-speaking areas and offer bilingual, English-Spanish customer services.

The State of the Union Addresses and other presidential speeches are translated to Spanish, following the precedent set by the Bill Clinton administration. Official Spanish translations are available at Whitehouse.gov. Moreover, non-Hispanic politicians fluent in Spanish speak in Spanish to Hispanic majority constituencies. There are 500 Spanish newspapers, 152 magazines, and 205 publishers in the United States; magazine and local television advertising expenditures for the Hispanic market have increased much from 1999 to 2003, with growth of 58 percent and 43 percent, respectively.

Federal agencies such as the United States Postal Service post Spanish language signs where their customers speak Spanish.

This guarantees Spanish's survival in the United States, yet, historically, the immigrant's original languages tend to disappear or become reduced through generational assimilation. Spanish disappeared in several countries and U.S. territories during the 20th century, notably in the Pacific Island countries of Guam, Micronesia, Palau, the Northern Marianas islands, and the Marshall Islands. In the Philippines, it is spoken by a minority of the population (only around 3,000,000).

The English-only movement seeks to establish English as the sole official language of the United States. Generally, they exert political public pressure upon Hispanophone immigrants to learn English and speak it publicly; as universities, business, and the professions use English, there is much social pressure to learn English for upward socio-economic mobility.

Generally, Hispanic Americans (13.4% of the 2002 population) are bilingual to a degree. A Simmons Market Research survey recorded that 19 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population speak only Spanish, 9.0 percent speak only English, 55 percent have limited English proficiency, and 17 percent are fully English-Spanish bilingual.

Intergenerational transmission of Spanish is a more accurate indicator of Spanish's future in the United States than raw statistical numbers of Hispanophone immigrants. Although Latin American immigrants hold varying English proficiency levels, almost all second-generation Hispanic Americans speak English, yet about 50 percent speak Spanish at home. Two-thirds of third-generation Mexican Americans speak only English at home.

Calvin Veltman undertook, for the National Center for Education Statistics and for the Hispanic Policy Development Project, the most complete study of English language adoption by Hispanophone immigrants. Mr Veltman's language shift studies document high bilingualism rates and subsequent adoption of English as the preferred language of Hispanics, particularly by the young and the native-born. The complete set of these studies' demographic projections postulates the near-complete assimilation of a given Hispanophone immigrant cohort within two generations. Although his study based itself upon a large 1976 sample from the Bureau of the Census (which has not been repeated), data from the 1990 Census tend to confirm the great Anglicization of the U.S. Hispanic population.

American literature in Spanish

Southwest Colonial literature

In 1610, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published his Historia de Nuevo México (History of New Mexico).

19th century

In 1880, José Martí moved to New York City.

Eusebio Chacón published El hijo de la tempestad in 1892.

20th century

Federico García Lorca wrote his collection of poems, Poeta en Nueva York, and the two plays Así que pasen cinco años and El público while living in New York. Giannina Braschi wrote the Latino postmodern poetry classic El imperio de los sueños in Spanish in New York. José Vasconcelos and Juan Ramón Jiménez were both exiled to the United States.

In her autobiography When I was Puerto Rican (1993), Esmeralda Santiago recounts her childhood on the island during the 1950s and her family's subsequent move to New York City, when she was 13 years old. Originally written in English, the book is an example of New York Rican literature.

See also

• Bilingual education
• Bilingualism in Canada
• English-only movement
• Isleños
• History of the Spanish language
• Languages in the United States
• List of U.S. cities with diacritics
• List of U.S. communities with Hispanic majority populations
• Spanish in the Americas
• French language in the United States
• Russian language in Ukraine