Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The diverse U.S.

One subject that we have touched on in class but not really gone into much detail about is the diversity of the people of the United States. I have come across a lot of interesting information while doing my research on foreign language studies for my paper. One tool that I came across was the MLA language map and to me, it really shone a light on the current diversity of the country that we will be teaching in. There is all kinds of neat features of the map. Below is the link.

http://www.mla.org/map_single

Aside from religion, ethnicity and cultural differences, languages are part of the diversity of this country. In addition, language can be closely related to religion, ethnicity and cultural differences therefore they cannot be ignored in a country where eating sushi and burritos has become a part of our culture. My goal here is not to go into my research paper but to highlight the issue and give some statistical information that you may find interesting.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thats a cool map. I've been trying to pass myself off as an ESL or ELL because English really isn't my first language but apparently no one(Lily Leigh, and Dr. Evers)seems to agree with me due to my place of birth (NC). Oh well!