Mother tongue claiming in the United States since 1960: trends and correlates related to the 'revival of ethnicity".

This article focuses on mother tongue claiming in the U.S. since 1960 in relation to trends and correlates related to the revival of ethnicity. The generational breakdown of non-English mother tongue claiming in 1970 obviously varied greatly from language to language, and its third generation was proportionately at its lowest in connection with those ethnolinguistic groups that had either relatively long or relatively short histories of post-immigrational presence in the U.S. Examinations of 1970 mother tongue claiming has resulted in findings which appear to be, on the whole, reasonable in terms of interlanguage comparisons and intervariable relationships. Non-English mother tongue claiming in 1970 was a massive affair. It is found that there was a large and virtually across the board increase in non-English mother tongue claiming from 1960 to 1970 and that this increase probably cannot be explained away as merely an artifact of wording changes in the Census. It is also found that this increase primarily occurred in the native-of-native generation and that it was greater for those languages that were most concentrated. This increase did not continue from 1970-1979, and that Spanish was primarily responsible for keeping the overall proportion of non-English mother tongue claiming on an even keel from 1970-1979.