[Scotland] Gaelic-Speaking Only Will Get A House.

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

This is a hard topic for me because I am in the middle of this and I can see the pros and the cons on both sides.

I have family and friends that are still on the reservation. Most have a foot in and a foot out. It is heartbreaking to lose the cultural and  language of any group, considering that knowledge, history, and beauty is lost forever when that happens. But most don't have the luxury of being able to live in two worlds, so they are forced to have to choose a side.

My grandmother was of the Pima tribe, in Arizona. I don't know one word of her native language, I was two years old when she died of breast cancer. My mother and her siblings were not taught it, because it was considered an obstacle in the society where they already had enough challenges for survival. I grew up hated by some of my relatives and we were frequently called half breeds, so I personally know this particular burden.

What’s Left Today

In spite of everything, there are still approximately 150 Native North American languages spoken in the United States today by more than 350,000 people, according to American Community Survey data collected from 2009 to 2013. That’s out of 350 total spoken languages in the country.

Though most of these languages are on the verge of dying out, some are holding on. The Navajo language, for instance, is the most spoken Native American language today, with nearly 170,000 speakers. The next most common is Yupik, at 19,750, which is spoken in Alaska.

However, the majority of Native Americans today speak only English. Of the roughly 2.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives counted by the 2016 census, 73 percent of those aged 5 years or older spoke only English. That’s down slightly from 73.7 percent in 2005, though in 2010, that number had dipped to 72.2 percent.


Via the U.S. Census Bureau

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/nativ...-in-the-us