Dallas Lovejoy

English 3

Ms. Fordahl

2/18/14

Language Usage in America

The languages used in America differ a lot more than people think. Some people might think that only English and Spanish are spoken in the U.S. Well I’m here to tell you there is actually many languages spoken in the U.S some of which people don’t even know about. Some other languages spoken in the U.S are French, Norwegian, and German just to name a few. Some of these languages however are not used very often so therefore some people just think they don’t exist in this country. Spanish and English are the two most prominent languages in the U.S though.

The story How To Tame A Wild Tongue talks about the differences between the Spanish and English language. This story chronicles the life of a student who speaks Spanish and is punished for doing so. She goes to a new school and the teachers get mad at her for speaking Spanish and tell her to speak English so she starts to speak English and then they tell her that she’s not speaking English correctly. The teachers tell her that she’s speaking American not English. She has no idea what they are talking about she is speaking English as best she could and now they they tell her she is not even speaking that correctly.

So what languages are used the most in the U.S English is obviously number 1 and Spanish is 2nd but what is third most popular language chinese is the third most popular language. People don’t realize this but 2.8 million people in the U.S speak chinese. That’s a pretty significant amount of people. Of course there is many other languages used in the U.S. those are the three most commonly used in the U.S.

So I guess the main points I think the story How To Tame A Wild Tongue is trying to get across is that there are many different languages used in the world and people can’t be so closed minded about the kinds of languages used in America. I also think the story is trying to tell Americans to not bully people for the type of language they speak or the way they speak it. I think the story does a great job portraying it.