Growing Semantics

Texas is home to a variety of people who have different racial background and culture, which makes for a very diverse range of languages all around the state. The number of languages spoken in Texas at home has been increasing over the past decade and it only seems to grow as the years go by. 

Out of the 24 million residents who live in Texas, 65% of that population are only-English speakers at home. The rest of the percentage speak more than 160 languages combined. According to an article posted on The Texas Tribune website, Spanish is the most spoken, non-English language in the state of Texas followed by Vietnamese placing in second and Chinese in third, which includes Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese languages. From this information one can assume that the majority of the people who don't speak English at home are of Hispanic and Asian demographics.

The largest group of immigrants in Texas come from people born in Latin America, which explains the 6 million people who are primarily Spanish speakers at home. According to a detailed study done by the United States Census Bureau, Bexar County, Texas, has the largest amount of residents who speak Spanish at home while Harris and Dallas County tie for second and Tarrant County has the smaller percentage out of the whole. 

Considering the language barrier, Texas education does a good job at offering ESL (English as a Second Language) classes at the majority of campuses, but an increase in budget in the education department could provide the needed amount of faculty, a variety of faculty that each specialize in a language, to create a more engaging environment not only for the Spanish speaking population, but also for the entire population who's primary language isn't English.