Census language data provides look into Minnesota's diversity

NINA MOINI: Well, every year, the American Community Survey, a survey affiliated with the US Census Bureau, asks people across the country to share what languages they speak at home. In Minnesota, those numbers not only help us understand immigration patterns and changes in language diversity, they also help shape state policy. Sahan Journal data reporter Cynthia Tu and Sahan Journal reporting fellow Shubhanjana Das recently published a story diving into the survey results and are on the line now to share more about the reporting. Thank you both so much for coming on the show.

SHUBHANJANA DAS: Thank you.

CYNTHIA TU: Hi, Nina. Thanks for having us.

NINA MOINI: Thank you both. I would love to start with you, Shubhanjana, of why did you and Cynthia decide to look further into this data?

SHUBHANJANA DAS: So the story really came from Cynthia, who was looking at this data when it was released this year. And we wanted to understand what does this mean. It's been one of those consistent sources of data on language. And when she started looking at the history of it, we noticed some differences in how this data was collected.

And obviously, the next question was, well, what does this mean for the linguistic diversity, the people who speak non-English languages in Minnesota? And it just started with asking a few people those questions. And we discovered some really interesting stuff and policy that this data informs.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Cynthia, how does the American Community Survey go about gathering this information? It sounds like it could be hard to gather.

CYNTHIA TU: Yeah, so the American Community Survey is a product under the Census Bureau. So the normal census form that people are familiar with comes every 10 years. But the American Community Survey surveys people every year. And it also only picks a sample of the population, so not everyone gets this form.

And one of the questions being asked is, what language other than English is spoken at home, as well as how well they speak English, to create a profile of language diversity in different communities. And once the Census Bureau collects this data, they use the population data that they have at hand to make a estimated projection of how many people speak certain languages nationally.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and that's so the American Community Survey has been tracking those languages since 1980, I read here in my notes. So Cynthia, what were some of the biggest changes that you noticed in the data?

CYNTHIA TU: So I would say a lot of things have changed. As you know, we have immigration coming in and folks from all parts of the world speak different languages. But something I found most interesting about this data is that the Census Bureau actually recognized over 1,300 different languages--

NINA MOINI: Ah.

CYNTHIA TU: --in its coding system. But in order to showcase this data publicly, they have to fold some less spoken languages into broader categories for privacy and also calculation reasons. And these categorization methods that they used changed over time, as we see changes in the United States language demographic.

For instance, Hindi-- that's one of the languages widely spoken in India-- was originally grouped with a couple other languages up until the early 2000s, when it became its own category. And we see a lot of those examples in this data. And just by looking at that, it gives us an indicator of how the language diversity in Minnesota has changed and how people around us-- the diversity of people around us is in our state.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and Shubhanjana, I'm seeing here that it looks like Spanish was the fastest growing language in Minnesota. Tell me a little bit about that.

SHUBHANJANA DAS: That's correct. Yeah. And I mean, I think what's so great about the story, too, is that you can actually see when that started happening. And while we didn't dive into that aspect in the story, there's so many different factors. I spoke to our state demographer, Susan Brower, for the story. And we wanted to be transparent about the fact that this data is an indication, at best, of immigration patterns. But it is something that is interesting if you see timelines as to when it happened, when these languages really became the top three, which is Spanish, Hmong, and Somali.

And it goes a lot to say in terms of immigration patterns. It could also be that more people started speaking these languages, younger populations. I spoke to some people who said, yeah, I wanted to connect to my language and speak to-- and connect to my community better by learning those. So it could be multiple different factors.

But like Cynthia said, it's a great snapshot of non-English languages that are spoken in Minnesota, even beyond those three languages. It was really fascinating to me just to see the diversity, because we do hear Spanish, Hmong, and Somali. But like Cynthia said, there's a whole lot of other languages spoken.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. So I'm reading here that Spanish speakers saw a tenfold increase in the past three decades. And then, like you mentioned, Hmong and Somali are the second and third fastest growing language. German has sharply declined since the 1980s. And Shubhanjana, understanding it is a snapshot, what do you foresee this data informing in terms of policy? How would it be used?

SHUBHANJANA DAS: It already is. Since 2023 is when things started changing. And a lot of that policy that came into place-- like, the story mentions two statutes, two statewide statutes that made it mandatory that for certain census tracts which report people who report that they don't speak English that well, you have to make interpretation services mandatory for them, the State Department makes information available in the top 10 languages that are spoken in Minnesota.

And it also most recently saw the Foundation of Enterprise Translations Office, which caters to executive offices in the state to provide translations in these three languages-- Hmong, Spanish, and Somali. And it also has funds for translation for other languages if there is a community that sees a need for that. So we are already seeing how this data is starting to shape policy in Minnesota in trying to reach more language groups.

And I've been told by the Enterprise Translations Office that there will be a statewide uniformity put in place for translations. Because something that was really interesting to me that the director of Enterprise Translations Office shared is that there can be discrepancies in translation, especially when it comes to health services. And those discrepancies can be really harmful. And that's something that they're using this data to iron out so that there are no discrepancies, and everybody gets the same translated information, no matter what language they speak.

NINA MOINI: So changes to the laws in recent years that if there's an area that, say, has 20% or more of people speaking in a language, that they would have interpreters and services, the idea they're going to make things more accessible, depending on where the need us. But Shubhanjana, how do community organizations use this data?

SHUBHANJANA DAS: Absolutely. Community organizations actually widely use this data because, often, for executive branches like this, it's hard to narrow down one particular community, which speaks, for example, [? Karen. ?] And it's hard to make that translation available from the State Department or from that big level. So the community organizations, we've been told by Susan Brower, the state demographer, is that they reach out based on, hey, this is what we're seeing in our community. Can you give us a sense of what other people we can reach out to if we're making these interpreted services available?

So there's the knowledge of the fact that this data exists. And there can be larger patterns that can be studied and reached out to these communities, are being used. This is being used as a resource by these communities and also by researchers. I spoke to a linguistic researcher who relies on this data heavily to work on language preservation in Minnesota.

NINA MOINI: And just lastly, Cynthia, the data on this story, it's very interactive. Let folks know where they can go see the story and dive deeper.

CYNTHIA TU: Yeah, of course. So you can go to sahanjournal.com. We cover immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota. And yeah, it should be on the front page, where you can see the interactive and interact with the graphic to look at the languages that you're interested in.

NINA MOINI: Fascinating. Thank you both for sharing your reporting with us. I appreciate it.

SHUBHANJANA DAS: Thank you, Nina.

CYNTHIA TU: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Sahan Journal reporting fellow Shubhanjana Das and data reporter Cynthia Tu.