[MLE] Is the US a monolingual country?

Dear MLE friends,
We sometimes talk as if India is unique in its multi-linguistic situation. And yes, of course it is. But the following quote might surprise you:
"While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city's public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York's most diverse borough, listed on their 2000 census forms "

Read more about the multilingual situation in a US city in this article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html?th&emc=th

Thanks to Susan Malone for the tip.
Regards,
Karsten

Karsten van Riezen
Education Consultant, SIL Int.
SIL, South Asia Group
LinkedIn KvR
www.sil.org

Recommended website: http://www.nmrc-jnu.org/
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html?th&emc=th

Listening to (and Saving) the World's Languages

By SAM ROBERTS
Published: April 28, 2010
….While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city's public schools or the 138 that residents of Queens, New York's most diverse borough, listed on their 2000 census forms.
"It is the capital of language density in the world," said Daniel Kaufman, an adjunct professor of linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "We're sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around even in 20 or 30 years."