4 ms·

Is English the native language for most of California?

spaceseaman 9y ago
Wow, that's actually an element of these standardized tests I've never thought of before - that ESL folks would do a big part in shifting numbers around due to unfamiliarity with the language. Thank you.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
  Are you curious to see Californian standardized testing acheivement excluding ESL students?
silvertonia 9y ago
Yes-- it's about 65% English, 28% Spanish.
avmich 9y ago
Not only that, but also - language is more of a skill, a habit, which grows and evolves with circumstances, while math is a "study", with objects, operations, rules, processes, correctness criteria etc. Eventually both are needed - as well as computers - but how to get there, opinions can differ widely.
urda 9y ago
While there is no "official" language for the United States (and thus California), it is widely considered that English is the de facto national language. It is the majority language for both the country and California. So having difficulty with English is a really, really bad thing for these students.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
  Having difficultu with English is definitely really bad. Especially in California, where poor English skills can continue to thrive in immigrant populations after schooling and lead to less opportunities in general.
noobermin 9y ago
I'm pretty sure it is. This seems to suggest most people speak english: "Nearly 43% of California residents speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than any other state." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California
labster 9y ago
Yes. Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. As with most second-generation or later immigrants. Though I have heard tales of Californians being native speakers of Lisp, this is probably just a rumor.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. That's true of most Californios, sure, but they are, by far, a minority of California Hispanics, who are mostly from families that immigrated much more recently.
  - labster 9y ago
    If you had read my comment past the first sentence, you would see that the second addressed your the larger population too.
- home_boi 9y ago
  Even if they are immigrants, knowing Spanish makes them half-way native English speakers because of the similarities between English and Spanish.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    English is a Germanic language, with vocab borrowed from lots of other sources but mostly French, Spanish is a Romance language (with, especially in it's Latin American form) a bunch of vocabulary borrowed from Nahuatl and Quechua. They are extremely dissimilar grammatically, and though they have some overlap and similarities in vocabulary, it's nowhere close to making fluency with either making you even minimally functional (much less halfway native) in the other.
    - home_boi 9y ago
      There are enough similarities to give them significant advantages compared to immigrants coming from other parts of the language tree. English and Spanish have thousands of cognates. Having almost exactly the same alphabet is also a huge advantage. Having already learned thousands of permutations of the same alphabet letters (words) will make memorizing and learning the next thousand permutations much easier.

Wow, that's actually an element of these standardized tests I've never thought of before - that ESL folks would do a big part in shifting numbers around due to unfamiliarity with the language. Thank you.

bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
Are you curious to see Californian standardized testing acheivement excluding ESL students?

silvertonia 9y ago

Yes-- it's about 65% English, 28% Spanish.

avmich 9y ago

Not only that, but also - language is more of a skill, a habit, which grows and evolves with circumstances, while math is a "study", with objects, operations, rules, processes, correctness criteria etc. Eventually both are needed - as well as computers - but how to get there, opinions can differ widely.

urda 9y ago

While there is no "official" language for the United States (and thus California), it is widely considered that English is the de facto national language. It is the majority language for both the country and California. So having difficulty with English is a really, really bad thing for these students.

bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
Having difficultu with English is definitely really bad. Especially in California, where poor English skills can continue to thrive in immigrant populations after schooling and lead to less opportunities in general.

noobermin 9y ago

I'm pretty sure it is. This seems to suggest most people speak english: "Nearly 43% of California residents speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than any other state." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California

labster 9y ago

Yes. Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. As with most second-generation or later immigrants. Though I have heard tales of Californians being native speakers of Lisp, this is probably just a rumor.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. That's true of most Californios, sure, but they are, by far, a minority of California Hispanics, who are mostly from families that immigrated much more recently.
- labster 9y ago
  If you had read my comment past the first sentence, you would see that the second addressed your the larger population too.
home_boi 9y ago
Even if they are immigrants, knowing Spanish makes them half-way native English speakers because of the similarities between English and Spanish.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  English is a Germanic language, with vocab borrowed from lots of other sources but mostly French, Spanish is a Romance language (with, especially in it's Latin American form) a bunch of vocabulary borrowed from Nahuatl and Quechua. They are extremely dissimilar grammatically, and though they have some overlap and similarities in vocabulary, it's nowhere close to making fluency with either making you even minimally functional (much less halfway native) in the other.
  - home_boi 9y ago
    There are enough similarities to give them significant advantages compared to immigrants coming from other parts of the language tree. English and Spanish have thousands of cognates. Having almost exactly the same alphabet is also a huge advantage. Having already learned thousands of permutations of the same alphabet letters (words) will make memorizing and learning the next thousand permutations much easier.