someonwoutthere
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So many websites have different ranking.
Does anone know the truth?
Does anone know the truth?
Anyway, there is no real answer. The United States census, as far as I know, doesn't ask Deafness or ASL-- and even if it did, the number would still be inaccurate because many Deaf people don't understand what the census is or the importance of it, so they don't submit the form.
I've heard lots of statistics but I can say with 95% confidence that ASL is definitely in the top 3. It's English, Spanish, and ASL.
Oh dudes.
I've heard recently that ASL is 4th popular languages in the U.S.
1) English
2) Spanish
3) French
4) ASL
I think the figures used to say that ASL is 4th largest language in use in the US was actually from a source that based the estimate on court cases in the US and the number of interpreters/translators used in that capacity. ASL was the 4th largest of languages requesting interpreters/translators in courtroom at the time of the study used to make that assessment (source).
In terms of language in use, though, there's little agreement because the census doesn't capture ASL, unfortunately. So, in the past estimators mistakenly tried to conflate ASL users with deaf people in general, assuming that all used ASL . Recent research, though, has pulled back on the number of ASL users in the US, placing the # at about 500,000 (max). So you could compare that # with the 2000 census figures for spoken languages, which would place ASL at ~ 13th:
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 – 217,000
We're not too far off of each other on the ranking by a difference of 200,000 people and we're agreement that saying ASL is a 3rd or 4th widely used language does not even sound right and more like an exaggeration.
We must be drawing from the same Gallaudet sources
I wish there was more information about ASL users available.
No. I didn't use any of Gallaudet sources. Here's a shorten version of my analysis back then.
Kokonut Pundit: Deaf Voters Not 2 Million Strong
No. I didn't use any of Gallaudet sources. Here's a shorten version of my analysis back then.
Kokonut Pundit: Deaf Voters Not 2 Million Strong