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"This map shows the most commonly spoken language in every US state, excluding English and Spanish", by Andy Kiersz and Ivan De Luce, Business Insider (1/18/20):

(NOTE: I will refer to languages other than English and Spanish as non-ES [NES], languages.)

A number of things about this map surprise me. First of all is the way several languages cluster in propinquitous states. For example, Vietnamese is stacked up in the middle of the map in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, with Iowa and Mississippi nearby and Oregon as an outlier.

German is extensively distributed in two internal clusters, with a Rocky Mountain group of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, and a Midwestern group of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky having South Carolina nearby.

It is not surprising that Tagalog is the number one NES language spoken in California and Nevada, and I know from personal observation that it is widely spoken in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, as well as in the Canadian province of British Columbia. But why have the Koreans chosen the three Southeastern states of Virginia, Alabama, and Georgia?

In contrast, "Chinese" is scattered in New York, Washington, Utah (huh?), and Arkansas (huh?), but anchored in the center of the nation at Missouri. But what is "Chinese"? It is most certainly not a single language, but a group / family of languages (Sinitic), and I would dare say that most speakers of Sinitic in America do not speak the official PRC language of Mandarin, but rather Cantonese, Taiwanese, Fuzhouese, Wenzhouese, Shanghainese, and so forth.

Arabic has long, well-established communities in the three Midwestern states of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Michigan, surrounding NES German-speaking Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.

It makes sense to me that French would be the first NES language in Louisiana, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, but I'm not so sure about the reason for its being so in Maryland and North Carolina.

Ditto for Haitian Creole in Florida (but why also Delaware?).

Ditto for Portuguese in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts (deep roots as fishing settlers).

I've long known about the large Hmong population in Wisconsin (product of the Vietnam War), but why did they choose that particular state? And what brought so many Somalis to Minnesota, mostly in Minneapolis and post-1990s?

The locations of virtually every NES language in the United States give food for thought:

Nepali (a very important language in my own life) in Nebraska

Pennsylvania Dutch in Pennsylvania (my adopted state)

Polish in Illinois

Gujarati in New Jersey (all those gas stations, Dunkin Donuts cum Baskin-Robbins shops, convenience stores, and mom-and-pop motels)

Navajo in New Mexico and Arizona; Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Sioux in South Dakota

llocano in Hawaii

Aleut-Eskimo in Alaska

Euskara didn't make the map, but there are many individuals having Basque heritage in America, concentrated in the Rocky Mountain states. Can you guess why?

Pondering the distribution of NES languages in the USA is a good way to grasp some important truths about the history and sociology of our country.

Readings

[h.t. Charles Belov]

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