Language Demographic data: Italian speaking households~ Joseph Martin

 

For my language data blog post, I chose areas in the United States where Italian is spoken. The data shown is the most recent, from 2021. None of these states have huge numbers of Italian speakers, but something I found interesting is how the majority of areas have at least a small amount of Italian speakers, even if it’s under 1%, and then there are some areas that don’t have any data to show. I found the grouping of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas to be interesting in the fact that there’s no Italian speakers there as far as the data goes, New Mexico, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi are the only other states with no data to show. 

I found data where I expected to find some, places like California and New York with big cities are bound to attract more, (even though California is relatively small, with only 0.14% speaking Italian) Two places really did surprise me though, Pennsylvania shockingly had 0.22% speaking Italian, my guess is it’s due to cities such as Philly or Pittsburgh, but that’s just an educated guess. Connecticut had 0.66% Italian speakers, which also surprised me as that wasn’t an area I expected to see much from, I felt like Connecticut would have been the numbers for New York or California going into this. I did some research, and found sources saying Italian Americans tend to be most found in the northeast, places like Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, places near where their ancestors would have settled when they came to the U.S. (This also explains info like the states with no data to show, as someplace like Idaho is a long way from Ellis Island.) I can also make a personal connection here as I’m Italian and my grandfather lived in New Jersey as his father came to the US from Italy.

(also sorry about the small image- hopefully it will be better for next time)