The cover of the census questionnaire included information in Spanish which provided a telephone number for respondents to call to request a census questionnaire and instructions in Spanish. Instruction guides were also available in 32 other languages to assist enumerators who encountered households or respondents who spoke no English.

Questions 15a and 15b referred to languages spoken at home in an effort to measure the current use of languages other than English. Persons who knew languages other than English but did not use them at home or who only used them elsewhere were excluded. Persons who reported speaking a language other than English at home may also speak English; however, the questions did not permit determination of the main or dominant language of persons who spoke both English and another language. (For more information, see discussion below on "Ability to Speak English.")

For persons who indicated that they spoke a language other than English at home in question 15a, but failed to specify the name of the language in question 15b, the language was assigned based on the language of other speakers in the household; on the language of a person of the same Spanish origin or detailed race group living in the same or a nearby area; or on a person of the same ancestry or place of birth. In all cases where a person was assigned a non-English language, it was assumed that the language was spoken at home. Persons for whom the name of a language other than English was entered in question 15b, and for whom question 15a was blank were assumed to speak that language at home.

The write-in responses listed in question 15b (specific language spoken) were transcribed onto computer files and coded into more than 380 detailed language categories using an automated coding system. The automated procedure compared write-in responses reported by respondents with entries in a computer dictionary, which initially contained approximately 2,000 language names. The dictionary was updated with a large number of new names, variations in spelling, and a small number of residual categories. Each write-in response was given a numeric code that was associated with one of the detailed categories in the dictionary. If the respondent listed more than one non-English language, only the first was coded.

The write-in responses represented the names people used for languages they speak. They may not match the names or categories used by linguists. The sets of categories used are sometimes geographic and sometimes linguistic. Figure 1 provides an illustration of the content of the classification schemes used to present language data. For more information, write to the Chief, Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC 20233.

Household Language--In households where one or more persons (age 5 years old or over) speak a language other than English, the household language assigned to all household members is the non-English language spoken by the first person with a non-English language in the following order:

householder, spouse, parent, sibling, child, grandchild, other relative, stepchild, unmarried partner, housemate or roommate, roomer, boarder, or foster child, or other nonrelative. Thus, persons who speak only English may have a non-English household language assigned to them in tabulations of persons by household language.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Figure 1. Four- and Twenty-Five-Group Classifications of 1990 Census Languages Spoken at Home with Illustrative Examples

Four-Group Twenty-Five-Group Examples Classification Classification ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spanish Spanish Spanish, Ladino Other Indo- French French, Cajun, European French Creole Italian Portuguese German Yiddish Other West Afrikaans, Dutch, Germanic Pennsylvania Dutch Scandanavian Danish, Norwegian, Swedish Polish Russian South Slavic Serbocroatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene Other Slavic Czech, Slovak, Ukranian Greek Indic Hindi, Bengali, Gujarathi, Punjabi, Romany, Sinhalese Other Indo- Armenian, Gaelic, European, not Lithuanian, Persian elsewhere classified

Languages of Chinese Asia and the Japanese Pacific Mon-Khmer Cambodian Tagalog Korean Vietnamese Other languages Chamorro, Dravidian (part) Languages, Hawaiian, Ilocano, Thai, Turkish All other lan- Arabic guages Hungarian Native North American languages Other languages Amharic, Syriac, (part) Finnish, Hebrew, Languages of Central and South America, Other Languages of Africa ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ability to Speak English--Persons 5 years old and over who reported that they spoke a language other than English in question 15a were also asked in question 15c to indicate their ability to speak English based on one of the following categories: "Very well," "Well," "Not well," or "Not at all."

The data on ability to speak English represent the person's own perception about his or her own ability or, because census questionnaires are usually completed by one household member, the responses may represent the perception of another household member. The instruction guides and questionnaires that were mailed to households did not include any information on how to interpret the response categories in question 15c.

Persons who reported that they spoke a language other than English at home but whose ability to speak English was not reported, were assigned the English-language ability of a randomly selected person of the same age, Spanish origin, nativity and year of entry, and language group.

Linguistic Isolation-- A household in which no person age 14 years or over speaks only English and no person age 14 years or over who speaks a language other than English speaks English "Very well" is classified as "linguistically isolated." All the members of a linguistically isolated household are tabulated as linguistically isolated, including members under age 14 years who may speak only English.

Limitation of the Data--Persons who speak a language other than English at home may have first learned that language at school. However, these persons would be expected to indicate that they spoke English "Very well." Persons who speak a language other than English, but do not do so at home, should have been reported as not speaking a language other than English at home.

The extreme detail in which language names were coded may give a false impression of the linguistic precision of these data. The names used by speakers of a language to identify it may reflect ethnic, geographic, or political affiliations and do not necessarily respect linguistic distinctions. The categories shown in the tabulations were chosen on a number of criteria, such as information about the number of speakers of each language that might be expected in a sample of the United States population.

Comparability--Information on language has been collected in every census since 1890. The comparability of data among censuses is limited by changes in question wording, by the subpopulations to whom the question was addressed, and by the detail that was published.

The same question on language was asked in the 1980 and 1990 censuses. This question on the current language spoken at home replaced the questions asked in prior censuses on mother tongue; that is, the language other than English spoken in the person's home when he or she was a child; one's first language; or the language spoken before immigrating to the United States. The censuses of 1910-1940, 1960 and 1970 included questions on mother tongue. A change in coding procedure from 1980 to 1990 should have improved accuracy of coding and may affect the number of persons reported in some of the 380 plus categories. It should not greatly affect the 4-group or 25- group lists. In 1980, coding clerks supplied numeric codes for the written entries on each questionnaire using a 2,000 name reference list. In 1990 written entries were transcribed to a computer file and matched to a computer dictionary which began with the 2,000 name list, but expanded as unmatched names were referred to headquarters specialists for resolution.

The question on ability to speak English was asked for the first time in 1980. In tabulations from 1980, the categories "Very well" and "Well" were combined. Data from other surveys suggested a major difference between the category "Very well" and the remaining categories. In tabulations showing ability to speak English, persons who reported that they spoke English "Very well" are presented separately from persons who reported their ability to speak English as less than "Very well."