Maddie's Homework

I can say with certainty that none of my school papers ever looked like this. My sons, even the two who graduated from high school in Jakarta, Indonesia, never had a writing assignment like this, either. But 2 of my granddaughters attend a school where they are learning to speak and write Spanish and Mandarin. This is recent homework sent home and finished beautifully by 8 year old Maddie, who is in third grade.

Our granddaughters are growing up in a world where communicating in a language other than English will be helpful, but they are receiving benefits that extend even further.  They are widening their world view and opening to understanding cultures beyond their own. They live in North Texas, and there as well as here in South Texas, we live in neighborhoods containing many cultures.

On our block alone, our neighbors include those originally from Pakistan and Guatemala. A couple of years ago there were also families from Scotland, Egypt, and Brazil. A CDC census of home spoken languages in our county looks like this!

Fort Bend County, Texas
Languages at home detail

Languages spoken at home:

1. English only (227,070)
2. Spanish (57,610)
3. Chinese (7,395)
4. Vietnamese (5,120)
5. Urdu (4,240)
6. Tagalog (3,160)
7. Gujarathi (2,260)
8. Hindi (2,205)
9. Kru, Ibo, Yoruba (1,830)
10. Malayalam (1,670)
11. Arabic (1,635)
12. French (1,295)
13. German (1,080)
14. Persian (965)
15. Formosan (935)
16. Korean (910)
17. Mandarin (810)
18. India, n.e.c. (645)
19. Cantonese (635)
20. Czech (560)
21. Tamil (420)
22. Telugu (385)
23. Bengali (370)
24. Marathi (330)
25. Italian (305)
26. Pakistan, n.e.c. (295)
27. Portuguese (285)
28. Russian (275)
29. Greek (240)
30. Thai (230)
31. Dutch (200)
32. Japanese (175)
33. Panjabi (145)
34. Kannada (145)
35. Polish (135)
36. French Creole (120)
37. Sindhi (120)
38. Swahili (110)
39. Norwegian (95)
40. Afrikaans (85)
41. Indonesian (80)
42. Bisayan (80)
43. Hebrew (75)
44. Bantu (75)
45. Romanian (75)
46. Turkish (70)
47. Armenian (50)
48. Swedish (45)
49. Danish (45)
50. African, not further spec. (45)
51. Cajun (35)
52. Ukrainian (30)
53. Ilocano (30)