Notes:
federal (政府・国家が)連邦政府の
claim to ～すると主張する
census 国勢調査
Tagalog タガログ語
Vietnamese ベトナム語
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Last time I told you that South Africa has 11 official languages, but did you know that on the federal level, the United States doesn’t have any official languages even though 96% of the population claims to speak it “well” or “very well”? Once every 10 years, we take a census in the US. In the year 2000, 215 million people over the age of five said their only language at home was English. The next most popular language was Spanish, with 28 million people. Chinese languages, French, German, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Italian were next; each had over 1 million speakers. I guess that’s why they call the US a salad bowl. (by Prof. Carmella Lieske)
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