More than 10% of American residents now speak only Spanish at home, up from 7.5% in 1990, according Bill Frey, a senior fellow in demography at the Milken Institute.
He writes: “Toy manufacturs, for example, upped their production of bilingual talking dolls (a switch converts them from English to Spanish). Univision is now available on local cable systems in small Old South communities, which long managed nicely on the usual mix of neutal American newscaster-speak and the local drawl. Disneyland now has a regular “Mickey Mambo Night,” replete with bilingual staff, to appeal to the Latino population surge in the once very white, very conservative Orange County, California.”
