Yesterday in line at CVS, the woman in line ahead of me talked with the clerk about some gossip rag article on John Edwards. “He is so shameful. He is no man. His wife is dying and he is with another woman. He can’t even wait until she dies.” She spoke with an accent suggesting that she has not lived in Columbus her entire life – maybe she came from the Pacific Rim somewhere. And the clerk, she sounded as though she might be originally from eastern Europe. They talked as if they were old friends about this “dog of a man John Edwards,” as the one woman said.
Here in Columbus, we have a large population of Hispanics, Somalians and Ukrainians. What languages do you hear around your city besides English? In some states of the US, you’re just as likely to hear Spanish as you are English. Does your website allow your visitors to read your crimes in a language other than English? If not, you’re missing a great opportunity to reach out to populations who sometimes feel segmented from mainstream society.
We offer a simple widget on our sites which can translate the entire site into one of over 20 languages.
According to the 2000 census,[9] the main languages by number of speakers older than five in the US are:
- English – 215 million
- Spanish – 28 million
- Chinese languages – 2.0 million + (mostly Cantonese speakers, with a growing group of Mandarin speakers)
- French – 1.6 million
- German – 1.4 million (High German) + German dialects like Hutterite German, Texas German, Pennsylvania German, Plautdietsch
- Tagalog – 1.2 million + (Most Filipinos may also know other Philippine languages, e.g. Ilokano, Pangasinan, Bikol languages, and Visayan languages)
- Vietnamese – 1.01 million
- Italian – 1.01 million
- Korean – 890,000
- Russian – 710,000
- Polish – 670,000
- Arabic – 610,000
- Portuguese – 560,000
- Japanese – 480,000
- French Creole – 450,000 (mostly Louisiana Creole French – 334,500)
- Greek – 370,000
- Hindi – 320,000
- Persian – 310,000
- Urdu – 260,000
- Gujarati – 240,000
- Armenian – 200,000
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