词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Language Map of the United States

Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: June 24, 2004

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: a map of mother tongues in America.

RS: Last week, we told you about americanrhetoric.com, a collection of well-known American speeches. Well, there's something brand new on the Web. It's a way to find out which languages are spoken in any American neighborhood, and by how many people.

AA: The Modern Language Association created the map with information from the last U.S. population count, the Census² of 2000. The executive director of this scholarly association, Rosemary Feal, says the map is for educators, marketers, public officials -- really, anyone interested.

FEAL: "We started off with a paper map -- it sounds quaint³ -- on a table, sort of putting Post-it's, you know, here's a concentration of Arabic speakers and here's the Portuguese⁴ speakers. And we soon realized that it had to be interactive⁵ and we thought, well, why not put it on the Web and let everyone take advantage of it."

RS: "Now how is this different from just the census data? Doesn't the local government take in the census data and analyze⁶ it and use it? How would this be any different?"

FEAL: "Well, first of all, ours allows anyone to have access and to play around with it, whereas if the particular community has the census data, it's probably buried in some report that addresses the demographics."

"Sure we all have the numbers available to us, but it's another thing to plug in your Zip [postal] code and to see those 300 speakers of Polish and the 80 speakers of Vietnamese in a tabular fashion, or to look at the language map and see the colors jumping out at you where the density⁷ of certain speakers might be high."

AA: "What are the top five languages that you've got?"

FEAL: "The top languages spoken at home in the United States after English [are] Spanish, Chinese, French, German and Tagalog. Now that German is very interesting, because we know there was a great influx⁸ of Germans in previous immigration waves. But it's fascinating to see how many speakers of German there still are in the United States."

RS: "And how did that break down, over 18 and under 18?"

FEAL: "For example German, if you look at the states where it's most spoken, like California, there's over 135,000 adults who speak German in California, but only around 11,000 children between five and seventeen. In New York, 85,000 speakers over age 18 and only 7,000 under. So you can see that it's coming out to less than 10 percent (who are under 18)."

AA: "So what are some of the up and coming languages in this country?"

FEAL: "Some of the up and coming languages include Asian languages such as Vietnamese. Tagalog, one of the languages spoken in the Philippines, is certainly on the increase. Spanish, of course, continues to grow, as do some of the less commonly taught languages from countries where we continue to receive large numbers of immigrants. Russian has been on the increase, for example."

AA: "Now do you think your map, I'm curious, when you think about the people with the official English movement, who want to make English the official language across the country -- it is now in some states, but they want to make it national -- do you think they're going to find more ammunition⁹ from your site? Or do you think this is going to reassure¹⁰ them? Or what's the state of English from your map?"

FEAL: "This will show those who favor an English-only movement two things. Number one, that the great majority of people living in the United States speak English at home. Number two, that the great majority of those who speak a language other than English at home speak English very well or well -- seventy-seven percent. That's reassuring¹¹.

"When immigrants come to the United States, they want to learn English. They know that English is the key to education and to success in American society, and immigrant families are eager for their children to learn English. What we hope this map will show is that we have great linguistic¹² resources in the United States, in addition to English, and we should be preserving those while we're learning English. The conference that I'm at here right now in the Washington area on languages and national need talks precisely¹³ about the wasted resource that we throw away when we don't encourage the next generation to keep the mother tongue while they're learning English."

RS: Rosemary Feal of the Modern Language Association spoke¹ to us from the National Language Conference, held this week near Baltimore, Maryland. The new MLA Language Map lists the top thirty languages spoken in the United States.

AA: The map is at mla.org. You can click on the link at our site, voanews.com/wordmaster. And if you'd like to speak up, write to us at。。。。。。。With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

 

1 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

2 census   

n.(官方的)人口调查，人口普查

参考例句：

• A census of population is taken every ten years.人口普查每10年进行一次。
• The census is taken one time every four years in our country.我国每四年一次人口普查。

3 quaint   

adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的

参考例句：

• There were many small lanes in the quaint village.在这古香古色的村庄里，有很多小巷。
• They still keep some quaint old customs.他们仍然保留着一些稀奇古怪的旧风俗。

4 Portuguese   

n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语

参考例句：

• They styled their house in the Portuguese manner.他们仿照葡萄牙的风格设计自己的房子。
• Her family is Portuguese in origin.她的家族是葡萄牙血统。

5 interactive   

adj.相互作用的，互相影响的，（电脑）交互的

参考例句：

• The psychotherapy is carried out in small interactive groups.这种心理治疗是在互动的小组之间进行的。
• This will make videogames more interactive than ever.这将使电子游戏的互动性更胜以往。

6 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

7 density   

n.密集，密度，浓度

参考例句：

• The population density of that country is 685 per square mile.那个国家的人口密度为每平方英里685人。
• The region has a very high population density.该地区的人口密度很高。

8 influx   

n.流入，注入

参考例句：

• The country simply cannot absorb this influx of refugees.这个国家实在不能接纳这么多涌入的难民。
• Textile workers favoured protection because they feared an influx of cheap cloth.纺织工人拥护贸易保护措施，因为他们担心涌入廉价纺织品。

9 ammunition   

n.军火，弹药

参考例句：

• A few of the jeeps had run out of ammunition.几辆吉普车上的弹药已经用光了。
• They have expended all their ammunition.他们把弹药用光。

10 reassure   

v.使放心，使消除疑虑

参考例句：

• This seemed to reassure him and he continued more confidently.这似乎使他放心一点，于是他更有信心地继续说了下去。
• The airline tried to reassure the customers that the planes were safe.航空公司尽力让乘客相信飞机是安全的。

11 reassuring   

a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的

参考例句：

• He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. 他轻拍了一下她的肩膀让她放心。
• With a reassuring pat on her arm, he left. 他鼓励地拍了拍她的手臂就离开了。

12 linguistic   

adj.语言的，语言学的

参考例句：

• She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
• The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。

13 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。