As our neighbor to the south and our third largest trading partner, Mexico has been in the news quite a bit recently. We have heard news reports ranging from the strengthening value of the peso to swine flu.

However, I have seen relatively little about the significant increase of indigenous Mixtec and Zapotec speakers from the Mexican state of Oaxaca migrating to the United States. It is estimated that more than 100,000 Zapotecs and Mixtecs have immigrated to the United States over the last 20 years. The Zapotec and Mixtec ethnic groups are marked by incredible linguistic diversity. There are 64 separate Zapotec languages and approximately 57 different Mixtec languages.

What does this mean for education translation in the United States? It means that we need to start discussing language access and language translation services for this population. According to researcher Sarah Poole, by the year 2010 Mixtecs and Zapotecs will comprise 20 percent of the agricultural force in the United States. Currently, this population primarily resides in Southern California, but as they migrate across the country following agricultural cycles, school districts need to start thinking about adding these languages to their language translation services budgets.

Ultimately, the better prepared we are, the better equipped we will be to provide effective language translation services to these families.

Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate


References:http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/oaxaca_cultures.html.

Tags: Language Access, Languages of Limited Diffusion

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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