Chicago's Multi-Lingual Populace

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Apr 29, 2010 9:00PM

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Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James would not feel at home here in Chicago. New info released by the Census Bureau shows how diverse the spoken language of Chicago and the state of Illinois are. As of 2007, 21.76 percent of Illinois residents spoke a language other than English, just above the national average of 19.7 percent. Overall, the Chicago metro area is in the top four U.S. cities for 13 non-English languages. According to the information, as of 2008:

1.5 million speak Spanish
198,838 speak Polish
43,574 speak Arabic
40,909 speak Italian
39,813 speak Urdu
39,045 speak Greek

The Tribune has more on the report, including how the new numbers compare to that of a century ago for Chicago.

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