Latinos are losing their Spanish, recent study shows

Hispanics are quickly losing Spanish with each generation in the United States, according to a new study by Rubén Rumbaut, a UC-Irvine sociology professor and co-author of the study "Linguistic Life Expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California."

The grandchildren of immigrants are likely to speak only English. By the third generation, only 17 percent of Hispanics speak Spanish fluently, and by the fourth generation, it drops to 5 percent.

The study challenges the perception that Hispanics resist learning English and that heavy immigration from Spanish-speaking countries threatens the American identity.

The study is based on data from the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles survey, and the third wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study in San Diego. The authors agree that the United States is aptly describes as a “graveyard” for languages because of its historical ability to absorb millions of immigrants and extinguish their mother tongues within a few generations.

You can read the full report at:
Population and Development Review