Multilingual California: Spanish in the Market

Abstract

During the last two decades there has been a major socio-demographic change, popularly called ‘a demographic revolution’: Hispanics¹ have become the largest minority in the United States. In 2000 the United States Census data began going public with the rattling headlines: ‘At 34.5 million Hispanics make up 13% of the national population, outnumbering African-Americans and making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest ethnic or race minority’ (US Census Bureau, 2001). In a CNN report entitled ‘Will Spanish become America’s second language?’ (Hochmuth, 2001), the lead read: ‘It’s not just your imagination. In cities, from coast to coast, the use of Spanish is booming, and is proliferating in ways no other language has done before in US history - other than English of course. It’s a development that’s making some people nervous. It’s making others rich.’ By 2010 the number of Hispanics increased to 55.5 million² or 16.3% of the population, i.e., the US Hispanic population worldwide rank