I just opened my 2010 Census envelope that came in the mail this weekend and as expected, there is a question about what race/language I speak at home. Required by the United States Constitution, the US census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. Out of curiosity, I went online to download the 2000 Census report which and found this piece related to languages spoken in the U.S. (See chart above)

I am eager to see the results of this new survey of 300+ million people living in America because my sense is that besides there being many more people in the U.S. than there was in 2,000 (estimates say we grew from 282M to more than 310M) I think there are many more people speaking other languages than did in 2000.

Why is the language of your audience important to know?

Many businesses struggle to know precisely what languages their customers prefer, or what languages/markets they should try to endear. Getting this census data is critical for public facing organizations in making the right decisions about programs and initiates. From what I see, businesses don’t really have a good handle on what languages their customers prefer. My judgement is that their marketing strategies are largely unscientific potions, concocted by conducting sporadic survey’s, sprinkled with a dose of anecdotes from people have seen and heard on TV. That’s why this census report is so valuable for businesses and organizations as it will give them the facts they need to justify spending money on translations for their customers, patients or employees.

What’s your prediction?

Feel free to comment below on what your prediction is about how the language demographic has changed in the U.S.