title: Jenson Button

text: Button became unenthusiastic over F1 and the press speculated on his future in the sport with rumors Alonso would be Magnussen's teammate in . He wanted to remain at McLaren but was made insecure about his career and told himself to concentrate on the present and not be concerned about the future. Dennis did not want Button to drive for McLaren but fellow team shareholder Mansour Ojjeh told him Button should remain over Magnussen after reviewing the situation. Negotiations between Button and McLaren racing director Éric Boullier and team owner Ron Dennis concluded with an agreement for Button to continue racing on 10 December. Button agreed to take a pay cut, with his contract containing the option for a second year; McLaren or Button were able to activate clauses to break the contract after the season if one of the parties desired it. Button struggled in 2015 due to an unreliable and an underpowered Honda engine lacking straightline speed, securing four top-ten finishes and a best result of sixth at the . He was rarely able to progress past the first qualifying session and took 16th in the Drivers' Championship with 16 points.


title: Jenson Button

text: He was retained by the McLaren team for following contractual discussions with Dennis and meetings with aerodynamics and engineers at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC). Button received a 50 per cent pay rise by staying at McLaren for another year. He had considered returning to the Williams team but decided against it. His car's new Honda engine was more powerful and allowed him to challenge for points-scoring finishes but reliability continued to hinder him and McLaren. He finished 15 of the 21 races that year, qualifying a season-high third at the , the highest start for the McLaren-Honda partnership. Button went on to finish the race a season-high sixth. He was unable to finish higher than eighth thereafter and ended his full-time career with a suspension failure at the season-ending . Button took 15th in the Drivers' Championship with 21 points finishing better than Alonso five times and qualifying higher on four occasions.


title: Jenson Button

text: Before the , he told Dennis he planned to retire after the season. Dennis asked Button to wait before returning for discussion to which he said he had already decided. He suggested Button take a sabbatical and mull over the decision to retire while resting and made Button an ambassador for McLaren. He would work in the team's simulator at MTC, represent them at sponsor functions and attempt to help them in car development. Button was retained by McLaren as reserve driver with the option to return to full-time racing for the team in if he and McLaren agreed to it. He was replaced as a GPDA director by Romain Grosjean. In April 2017, Boullier asked Button to drive in lieu of the Indianapolis 500-bound Alonso at the and agreed after Goodard told him there was no way to get out of the commitment because he was contractually bound to drive. He prepared in the team's simulator instead of testing in Bahrain because he would learn nothing by not driving on a narrow street circuit. He retired late in the race following a collision with Sauber driver Pascal Wehrlein that damaged his car.


title: Jenson Button

text: In November 2017, Button was replaced as McLaren reserve driver by 2017 FIA Formula Three European champion Lando Norris for 2018. His contract with McLaren expired without renewal at the end of 2017 allowing him to focus on other racing ventures.


title: Jenson Button

text: In January 2021, Button rejoined Williams as a senior advisor on a multi-year deal. He will work with their race and Williams Academy drivers on-track and at the team's headquarters and conduct ambassadorial duties for the team. Button focuses on the entire team and not one specific department but could not enter Williams' premises due to travel restrictions from the United States, and COVID-19 protocols restricted his mixing with team since he was in the Sky Sports broadcasting bubble.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button became interested in Super GT in about 2011, and discussions with Honda led to his series debut at the 2017 Suzuka 1000km in a NSX-GT for Team Mugen with teammates Hideki Mutoh and Daisuke Nakajima. The trio finished 12th following two penalties and two tyre punctures. He also considered racing as a third driver for Acura Team Penske's IMSA SportsCar Championship team, but was rejected. Button drove the full 2018 Super GT Series for Team Kunimitsu in the No. 100 GT500-class Honda NSX-GT alongside Naoki Yamamoto; Button wanted to drive a Bridgestone-shod car and drivers recommended Yamamoto because he speaks English. Button's team helped him to communicate better, adapt to the series and its culture. He and Yamamoto won at Sportsland Sugo and took two-second-place finishes to enter the season-ending race at Twin Ring Motegi equal on points with the TOM'S duo of Ryō Hirakawa and Nick Cassidy. He held off Hirakawa to win the GT500 title by three points and was the first rookie champion since Toranosuke Takagi in 2005.


title: Jenson Button

text: For the 2019 season, Button remained at Team Kunimitsu alongside Yamamoto in the renumbered No. 1 Honda. In an incident-filled season, Button and Yamamoto were taken out of the lead in the opening round at Okayama, a mistimed safety car at the second Fuji race and a poor tyre choice in the rain at Sugo cost the team possible victories. The pair achieved two podium finishes at both Fuji rounds and a sixth place at Motegi to finish eighth in the GT500 Drivers' Championship with 37 points. In October 2019, he drove the final two races of the season-ending Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) round at the Hockenheimring in his Team Kunimitsu NSX car as Honda's wild card entry. He finished 9th in the first race and 16th in the second. Button did not enter the "Super GT × DTM Dream Race" at Fuji Speedway because his contract did not oblige him to do so, and left Super GT after 2019 because he did not want to fly frequently from the United States to Japan and wanted to explore other racing series.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button made his endurance racing debut at the 1999 24 Hours of Spa, sharing a BMW Team Raffanelli 320i E46 with David Saelens and Tomáš Enge in the SP class, and retiring after 22 laps with fuel tank failure. Button agreed to drive most of the 2018–19 FIA World Endurance Championship sharing a BR Engineering BR1 car in the Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) class with Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin for SMP Racing. Making his FIA World Endurance Championship debut at the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans, electronic problems dropped the car down the order before the team retired with an engine failure late in the race with Button driving at the time. He finished fourth at the 6 Hours of Fuji and third at the following 6 Hours of Shanghai. Button missed the 1000 Miles of Sebring and 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps because of Super GT commitments, and the 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans because his fiancée was due to give birth to their first child.


title: Jenson Button

text: He made his British GT debut in the 2020 season's final round, the three-hour Silverstone 500, sharing the No. 3 Jenson Team Rocket RJN McLaren 720S GT3 with team co-owner Chris Buncombe. The two finished the race in 14th position.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button was invited to the Race of Champions six times: in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2015 and 2017, reaching the semi-finals of the Nations Cup with Andy Priaulx for Team Autosport in 2007 and 2008 and finishing second in 2009. His best performance in the Race of Champions were the semi-finals in 2009. In 2019, Button drove off-road races in a Rocket Motorsports-entered Brenthel Industries Spec 6100 TT class truck with Buncombe and managing director Mazen Fawaz his co-drivers. This came about when Button told Buncombe they would race the Baja 1000 as Buncombe's 40th birthday present and sought vehicle components. Navigated by Terry Madden, he finished no higher than the top 20 in the Mint 400 with retirements in the Vegas to Reno and the Baja 1000.


title: Jenson Button

text: In 2020, while motor racing was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Button participated in eSports races. In January 2021, Button launched JBXE to compete in the all-electric SUV off-road racing series Extreme E from the 2021 season on. Button made his first foray into historic racing at the 2021 Goodwood Revival, partaking in the Stirling Moss Trophy and the Royal Automobile Club TT Celebration races. He is set to drive an FC1-X car for the Xite Energy Racing team in the all-electric Group E category for the 2022–23 season of the off-road Nitro Rallycross series.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button has a smooth driving style; journalist Mark Hughes wrote in 2009, "Button has a fantastic feel for how much momentum can be taken into a corner and this allows him to be minimal in his inputs—his steering and throttle movements in particular tend to be graceful and beautifully co-ordinated." This allows him to perform well in wet-weather where the front of the car tends to slide more than the rear, and many believe his smooth style better preserves the tyres during a race. He adapted his style in go-karts and transferred it to more powerful machinery. Since 2000, Button has braked with his left foot, by dragging the brake pedal and stopping the car in less time to control and modulate power. He likes to turn into a corner early under braking and balance the car on pedal application and steering, creating more strain in tyre loads for a longer physical lap but allowing for a higher minimum corner entry speed and allowing Button to adapt to a changeable or slippery track.


title: Jenson Button

text: He is comfortable driving a car with understeer, prefers the rear to be stable into corners and on which he is able to lean on leaving them, and rarely locks the inside of his front tyres. His smooth driving also means he cannot generate the necessary tyre temperature on a cool track. Button occasionally cannot get his tyres to operate efficiently over a single lap in qualifying because his gentle steering produces less energy into the wheel. His driving gave him additional thought time and be less prone to making an error for improved consistency in races and notices events without the team necessarily instructing him on what to do. Button accurately exploits grip on a damp corner to adapt to his limits earlier than other drivers. During 2001 and 2007, when traction control was legal in F1, he was able to control the throttle pedal to prevent wheelspin, allowing him to be as fast due to his feel for grip exiting a turn.


title: Jenson Button

text: For the 2014 season, the FIA created a new sporting regulation allowing a driver to select a unique car number for use throughout their F1 career. Button chose the number 22, which was the one he was assigned in his 2009 championship season.


title: Jenson Button

text: The BBC signed Button to promote its BBCi digital television interactive service from December 2003 to January 2004. He is a brand ambassador for Head & Shoulders, and appeared in advertising campaigns for the company. Other companies that Button has done business with are Hilton, Hugo Boss, Santander Bank, Tag Heuer, Vodafone. and Baylis & Harding. As a result of Button's endorsement money and Mercedes salary, he was listed as one of the world's top-earning drivers in motorsports by "Forbes" between June 2012 and June 2013. He and multi-sport brand Dare 2b collaborated on a men's ski range of clothing and accessories called AW20 in 2020. Button worked with car builder Ant Anstead, designer Mark Stubbs and business adviser Roger Behle to relaunch luxury coach maker Radford in early 2021.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button is also involved in charitable work through the creation of The Jenson Button Trust. Established in March 2010, the Trust selects and nominates a number of charitable beneficiaries that receive funding. He is a patron of Make-A-Wish Foundation UK granting the wishes of terminally ill children and young persons, a sport ambassador for both The Prince's Trust and the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation, and supports the Sean Edwards Foundation. Button is part of Johnnie Walker's "Join The Pact" initiative to promote responsible drinking, and began the "Pink for Papa" campaign in 2014 following the death of his father to raise funding for the Henry Surtees Foundation.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button ran a restaurant, Victus, in Harrogate from 2011 to 2012. In 2012, he, Goodard and public relations officer James Williamson founded sports agency The Sports Partnership to provide public relations services and management to the sporting industry. Button, Buncombe and team principal Bob Neville founded sports car team Jenson Team Rocket RJN in late 2018. He was on the judging panel of the 2003 UK F1 Drivers' Challenge broadcast on the Five television programme "Be A Grand Prix Driver", voiced his own character in the animated cartoon series "Tooned," and since the , has analysed select races for Sky Sports F1.


title: Jenson Button

text: Button has received a varying amount of press coverage from minor to extensive on his F1 career and personal life; this effect has been labelled "Buttonmania". Prior to winning the 2009 championship, his lack of success led critics to label him "a nearly man" and "a pin-up and lightweight" for his photogenic appearance, but it ceased following his success. Ben Anderson of "Autosport" notes that the driver "is rarely picked as one of grand prix racing's true elite drivers" and is not "discussed in the same breath as those, such as Schumacher and Ayrton Senna" due to "a lack of absolute dynamism behind the wheel in difficult technical circumstances – perhaps holds him back from being regarded as among the true elite." Writing for "The New York Times", Brad Spurgeon said that Button's F1 debut began a trend of teams signing young drivers and how they would cope with pressure, performance and the media in the championship. BBC Sport's Andrew Benson called him "urbane and eloquent. Good-looking and charismatic, he is a marketing person's dream, and has a ready wit that can edge into sarcasm if he is impatient or uncomfortable with a situation."


title: Jenson Button

text: Button finished second to footballer Ryan Giggs in voting for the 2009 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. He also won the BBC West Country's Sports Personality of the Year and the Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year award. He won the 2000 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Newcomer Award for finishing eighth in that year's F1 season, the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy in 2001, and the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy as the most successful British or Commonwealth driver in a season five times: from 2004 to 2006, 2009 and 2011. Button was voted the Autosport Rookie of the Year in 2000, the International Racing Driver Award in 2004 and 2009, and the British Competition Driver of the Year in 2003, 2009, 2011 and 2012. He won the BRDC Gold Star in 2004 and 2009, and was inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame in 2017.


title: Jenson Button

text: He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to motorsport. Button's home town, Frome, has named a street and a footbridge carrying the River Frome after him, and has awarded him the freedom of the town. Button received an honorary doctorate in engineering from the University of Bath in December 2016. He has authored five books about his life and career.


title: Jenson Button

text: His hobbies include mountain biking, competing in triathlons and bodyboarding. He also maintains an automobile collection. He was engaged to the English actress and singer Louise Griffiths before ending their five-year relationship in 2005. Button was married to his long-time Japanese girlfriend and model Jessica Michibata from 2014 to 2015. He married American model Brittny Ward in 2022 with whom he has a son and a daughter. They currently reside in Los Angeles. Button supports Bristol City Football Club.


title: Jenson Button

text: On 3 August 2015, Button and his then wife Jessica were burgled at a rented Saint-Tropez home while staying with friends when robbers looted the house and stole belongings worth £300,000 including his wife's £250,000 engagement ring. Reports suggested that the couple might have been gassed through the air conditioning system prior to the burglars' entry into the building.


title: Dredd

text: Dredd is a 2012 science fiction action film directed by Pete Travis and written and produced by Alex Garland. It is based on the "2000 AD" comic strip "Judge Dredd" and its eponymous character created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra. Karl Urban stars as Judge Dredd, a law enforcer given the power of judge, jury and executioner in a vast, dystopic metropolis called Mega-City One that lies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Dredd and his apprentice partner, Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), are forced to bring order to a 200-storey high-rise block of apartments and deal with its resident drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey).


title: Dredd

text: Garland began writing the script in 2006, although the development of a new "Judge Dredd" film adaptation, unrelated to the 1995 film "Judge Dredd", was not announced until December 2008. Produced by British studio DNA Films, "Dredd" began principal photography, using 3D cameras throughout, in November 2010. Filming took place on practical sets and locations in Cape Town and Johannesburg.


title: Dredd

text: "Dredd" was released on 7 September 2012 in the United Kingdom and on 21 September worldwide. Critics were generally positive about the film's visual effects, casting and action sequences, while criticism focused on excessive violence as well as a perceived lack of the satirical elements that are found in the source comic. Despite the positive critical response, the film earned just over $41 million at the box office on an estimated budget of $30–45 million. "Dredd" saw greater success following its home release, and has since been recognised as a cult film. The theatrical gross made a sequel unlikely, but home media sales and fan efforts endorsed by "2000 AD"s publisher Rebellion Developments have maintained the possibility of a second film.


title: Dredd

text: In 2080, most of the United States is a dystopic post nuclear war wasteland known as the Cursed Earth. On the east coast lies Mega-City One, a violent metropolis with 800 million residents and 17,000 serious crimes reported daily. The only force for order are the Judges, who act as judge, jury, and executioner. Judge Dredd is tasked by the Chief Judge with evaluating new recruit Cassandra Anderson, a powerful psychic who marginally failed the aptitude tests to become a Judge.


title: Dredd

text: In a 200-storey slum tower block called Peach Trees, drug lord Madeline "Ma-Ma" Madrigal executes three rogue drug dealers by having them skinned alive. They are infused with Slo-Mo (an addictive new drug that reduces the user's perception of time to 1% of normal) and thrown down to the atrium from the top floor. Dredd and Anderson are sent in to investigate and learn of a drug den, which they raid. They arrest a thug named Kay, whom Anderson's mind probe reveals to be the one that carried out the executions, and Dredd decides to take him in for questioning. In response, Ma-Ma's forces seize the tower's security control room and seal the building (closing its blast shield doors under the pretext of a security test) to prevent the Judges from leaving or summoning help.


title: Dredd

text: Ma-Ma orders Dredd and Anderson killed, forcing the Judges to fight their way through dozens of armed thugs. Arriving at the 76th floor, the Judges are assaulted by Ma-Ma and her men with rotary cannons that rip through the walls, killing numerous residents. The Judges breach an outer wall and call for backup. Meanwhile, Ma-Ma sends her henchman Caleb to search for the Judges. When they meet, Dredd throws Caleb off the tower in full view of Ma-Ma.


title: Dredd

text: Dredd suspects Ma-Ma is desperate to keep Kay quiet and beats him for information. Anderson reads Kay's mind and learns Peach Trees is the center of Slo-Mo production and distribution. Anderson suggests they hide while awaiting assistance, but Dredd insists they move up the tower and pursue Ma-Ma. Judges Volt and Guthrie respond to Dredd's call, but Ma-Ma's computer expert denies them entry by persuading them the security system is malfunctioning. A pair of armed teens confront Dredd and Anderson, allowing Kay to disarm and overpower Anderson. Kay then escapes with her as a hostage and takes her to Ma-Ma's base on the top floor.


title: Dredd

text: While Dredd works his way toward Ma-Ma, she calls in the corrupt Judges Lex, Kaplan, Chan, and Alvarez. The four relieve Volt and Guthrie from duty and are allowed into the building. Dredd encounters Chan and is suspicious that he does not ask about Anderson's status. Seeing his cover blown, Chan attacks Dredd but is killed. Meanwhile, Kay tries to execute Anderson with her own weapon, but the pistol's DNA scanner does not recognize him and explodes, taking his hand off. She escapes and later encounters Kaplan, whom she promptly kills after reading her mind. Elsewhere, Dredd kills Alvarez but runs out of ammunition. He is subsequently shot and injured by Lex, but Dredd stalls him long enough for Anderson to arrive and kill Lex.


title: Dredd

text: Anderson and Dredd obtain the code to Ma-Ma's apartment from her computer expert and confront her. Ma-Ma tells Dredd that if she dies, a device on her wrist will detonate explosives on the top floors, destroying the building. Because the detonator's signal will not reach the explosives from the ground floor, Dredd forces Ma-Ma to inhale Slo-Mo and throws her down the atrium to her death.


title: Dredd

text: In the aftermath, Anderson accepts that she has failed her evaluation by getting disarmed and leaves. The Chief Judge asks Dredd about Anderson's performance; he responds that she has passed.


title: Dredd

text: The cast also includes: Domhnall Gleeson as the gang's unnamed computer expert; Warrick Grier as Ma-Ma's right-hand man Caleb; DeObia Oparei as TJ, Peach Trees' medic; Francis Chouler as Judge Guthrie, Daniel Hadebe as Judge Volt, and Rakie Ayola as the Chief Judge. Langley Kirkwood, Edwin Perry, Karl Thaning, and Michele Levin portray, respectively, the corrupt Judges Lex, Alvarez, Chan, and Kaplan. "Dredd" also features Junior Singo as Amos and Luke Tyler as Freel, young boys who confront Dredd; Jason Cope as Zwirner, the thug executed by Dredd during the opening scene; Joe Vaz as Big Joe, the thug that leads the confrontation outside of the med station; Scott Sparrow as Japhet, Anderson's first execution; and Nicole Bailey as Cathy, Japhet's wife, in whose apartment the Judges take refuge.


title: Dredd

text: Development of the film was announced on 20 December 2008, although writer Alex Garland had begun working on the script in 2006. British studio DNA Films produced the film, and partnered with sales agency IM Global to sell the worldwide distribution rights. By May 2010, this partnership saw IM Global and its owner Reliance Big Pictures agree to co-finance the 3-D project with a $45 million production budget, and a schedule to begin filming in Johannesburg, South Africa in late 2010. Pete Travis was named as the film's director and Garland, Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich would produce it. Duncan Jones had previously been offered the role of director. In a 2010 interview, Jones said that his vision for the film was unconventional—describing it as weird, dark, and funny—and it did not mesh well with Garland's script. In September 2010, it was reported that the film would be titled "Dredd".


title: Dredd

text: Pre-production commenced on 23 August 2010 at Cape Town Film Studios in Cape Town, South Africa. During the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International in July, Urban confirmed that he had been offered the role of Judge Dredd, and on 18 August 2010, it was reported that Urban officially had the role. In September 2010, it was announced that Thirlby would play Dredd's telepathic rookie Cassandra Anderson. In the same month during the Toronto International Film Festival, the film attracted $30 million in worldwide pre-sales to distributors in 90% of theatrical markets. The sales included a $7 million deal with British distributor Entertainment Film Distributors.


title: Dredd

text: On 2 November 2010, Lions Gate Entertainment secured the North American distribution rights to "Dredd". Headey joined the cast as drug-dealer Ma-Ma in January 2011. "Judge Dredd" creator John Wagner acted as a consultant on the film. In 2012, he confirmed that it was a new adaptation of the comic material and was not a remake of the 1995 adaptation "Judge Dredd", which starred Sylvester Stallone.


title: Dredd

text: Garland began writing "Dredd" during post-production of his other writing credit "Sunshine", and completed his first draft while serving as an executive producer during filming of "28 Weeks Later". Garland's draft revolved around one of Dredd's main enemies, the undead Judge Death. He described the story as a "riff on the whole Judge system", but that it did not work because the Judge system had not yet been established and required too much knowledge about the "Judge Dredd" comic from the audience. He also considered the end result too surreal and extreme. From this script, Garland decided that the story needed to be more focused and grounded. He instead considered adapting some of the notable Judge Dredd storylines, including "Democracy" (1986) and "Origins" (2006). He decided to avoid these lengthy tales in favour of a shorter, day-in-the-life story about Dredd and his function as a cop in the dystopian environment of Mega-City One. When developing the Judge Dredd character, Garland tried to closely follow that of the comic-book character, who undergoes only small personality changes over a lengthy period of time. He said: "I didn't think Dredd could have a great epiphany, but there is definitely a change in him over the course of the movie. He makes a very clear statement at the beginning of the film which he then contradicts at the end. That's about as far as the shift goes." Garland intentionally gave the traditional character development to Anderson to compensate for Dredd's character stability.


title: Dredd

text: Discussing the film's setting within the Peach Trees Block tower, Garland said the buildings were "like micro city states ... you could live and die in those buildings". He also considered that the setting met Wagner's suggestion that the future portrayed in "Dredd" should relate to modern ways of living. Garland named the tower after a restaurant called "The Peach Tree" in Shrewsbury, England, where he first met with Wagner. The budget limited his ability to represent some of the comic aspects of Mega-City One, such as robots and aliens. Throughout the production, Garland would send his script to Wagner, who would revise some of the dialogue. Urban would then further revise the script during his performance.


title: Dredd

text: The filmmakers decided that Dredd should appear lean and fast like a boxer rather than bulky like "someone who spends hours sort of steroiding himself up." His Judge uniform was altered from the comic version; an extruded eagle statuette was removed from his shoulder pad to emphasise the outfit's functionality and give it a sense of realism. Garland said: "If you did a very faithful adaptation of the uniform you'd have someone who if he got stabbed in the stomach he'd be in big trouble. Dredd is out there on the frontline so he needed protection." Remaining faithful to the comic, Dredd's face, except for his mouth, is never shown and his helmet is not removed throughout the film. Urban said: "He is supposed to be the faceless representative of the law and I think that is part of his enigma ... You wouldn't get to the end of a Sergio Leone Western and go, 'God, I didn't even know the character's name!' It's irrelevant."


title: Dredd

text: Dredd's signature weapon, the "Lawgiver" was developed as a fully operational weapon based on a 9mm firing system, capable of firing ammunition and being changed from automatic to semi-auto fire. His motorcycle "Lawmaster" was a modified 500cc motorcycle. A large fairing was added over the motorcycle with machine guns, an extended wheel base and the largest functional tyres possible. The vehicle was also operational and Urban insisted on riding it himself rather than relying on Chroma key visual effects. Wagner described the necessity of adaptation from the source material and said that the 1995 film's attempt to directly replicate the comic's motorcycle was unable to steer because the tyres were too large.


title: Dredd

text: Garland and VFX supervisor Jon Thum began developing the Slo-Mo concept sequences in 2009 during filming for "Never Let Me Go". They experimented with an effect to replicate the visual effects of hallucinogenic drugs to see how long it could be used before it distracted the viewer from the story or action sequence. They continued to develop and modify the effect until the end of post-production, tweaking colours, colour saturation, image framing and camera motion. Slo-Mo scenes also feature a rainbow colour scheme and sparkle highlights to create an unreal and otherworldly effect. The filmmakers experimented with blood bags, prosthetics, shooting real bullets, and compressed air to see the effect of direct body hits in slow motion. In the finished film, compressed air was used to create impact ripples on flesh. Garland said the concept was inspired by nature documentaries that used high-speed photography to capture animals in slow motion. He said, "You see a whale or a shark breach the water ... then you'd stop thinking about the animal and you get transfixed by ... how water droplets connect and touch against each other. Somehow like a real [drug] trip, sort of stepping outside it but staying attached at the same time." He questioned whether the technique could be used with violence to make it purely aesthetic. He said: "Can it be so abstract that it becomes genuinely beautiful? ...really aesthetically beautiful even if someone is having their cheek blown out or their head crushing into concrete." Comic artist Jock provided concept art for the film design.


title: Dredd

text: With a $30–45 million production budget, filming began on 12 November 2010 in Cape Town and took approximately 13 weeks, with second unit photography occurring over seven weeks. Filming locations included Johannesburg and Cape Town Film Studios ("Dredd" was the first project filmed at the studio). The project involved a majority of Cape Town crew members and about 40 imported crew. The producers chose to film in South Africa because of the lowered cost of employing cast and crew compared to locations in Europe and North America, and government incentives that offered to rebate up to 25% of the production costs. The film was shot digitally and primarily in 3D using RED MX, SI2K and Phantom Flex high-speed cameras for the Slo-Mo sequences, producing 4,000 frames per second. Multiple camera rigs were used. Some 2D elements were converted to 3D in post-production.


title: Dredd

text: DNA Films' co-founder Andrew Macdonald engaged cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to manage the shoot; it was the first time Mantle had worked with 3D. The filmmakers wanted "Dredd" to have a realistic, visceral look, and drew inspiration from crime and gangster films. For scenes conveying the time and space altering effects of Slo-Mo, Mantle aimed to create images that would be beautiful but disorienting.


title: Dredd

text: Mega-City One and its high rise towers were created in Cape Town Film Studios. Finding a suitable set for the expansive Peach Trees atrium proved difficult, and the producers did not want to build an expensive set. While observing scouting photos of Cape Town, the filmmakers noticed a large three-walled external space that looked like an interior when filmed at night. A key sequence involving Ma-Ma and her gang firing rotary cannons across the atrium in their attempt to kill Judge Dredd required ten days of filming and eight different sets inside and outside the studio which were blended together with visual effects. Visual effects supervisor Jon Thum was unable to accompany a helicopter flight to obtain planned aerial shots of Johannesburg due to last-minute flight permissions; the resulting shots were non-specific and Thum had to pick out ones that could tell the story. Mantle had to develop new rigs to obtain close-up shots. Describing the aesthetic he aimed to achieve, he said: "I hope it will be more painterly. If we get it right, it will be a cross between "Blade Runner" and "Clockwork Orange"." Garland was a constant presence on the shoot; Urban turned to Garland for direction instead of Travis.


title: Dredd

text: The filmmakers experimented with the visuals of Mega-City One, including the design and positioning of the city's tower blocks, to create the impression that the city had risen out of the remains of another. They found that replicating the comic visuals of blocks close together made the blocks appear small. Instead they allowed more space between the buildings to emphasise the larger buildings and allow for the presence of roads and cars to allow for extrapolation outside of the picture. Outcrops and appendages were added to break up the buildings' straight lines. On 7 October 2011, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that Travis was prohibited from participating in the editing process following creative disagreements between producers and executives. Garland took over the editing process; his contribution was considered significant enough for him to seek a co-director credit—a situation considered unusual as Garland had never directed a film before and had not been in charge of any filming. The disagreement concerned a disapproval over the footage that Travis was providing. Although Travis was removed from the editing process, he was monitoring the progress of the film. On 10 October, Travis and Garland released a joint statement saying that they had agreed on an "unorthodox collaboration" before production began, that Travis was still involved in the film and that Garland was not seeking a co-director credit. In March 2018, Urban said that he believed "Dredd" should be considered Garland's directorial debut.


title: Dredd

text: Paul Leonard-Morgan wrote the film's industrial music score. Leonard-Morgan created music to suit the film's futuristic setting. He experimented with band-based music, but decided it sounded over-produced and too safe. He turned to electronic music and used 1980s-style synthesisers and modern sound modules to create various combinations and applied distortion and other effects to the result. Leonard-Morgan said, "I was looking to create a timeless score which couldn't be placed in any particular era. So it's ended up being a cross between a modern dance track and evocative soundscapes." For scenes conveying the effect of the Slo-Mo narcotic, he composed new music with real instruments and then slowed the songs down to match the visuals, such that one second of his composed score could last ten minutes (slowed to 0.17% of original). He then added additional real-time score to the slowed track.


title: Dredd

text: An unofficially altered Justin Bieber song served as inspiration for the Slo-Mo theme. Garland said that Portishead instrumentalist Geoff Barrow "sent me a link to a Justin Bieber song slowed down 800 times and it became this stunning trippy choral music." Morgan recreated the effect based on the modified track, which was used in the finished film. The film used Bieber's music as a temporary placeholder during editing before the score was finalised.


title: Dredd

text: The film also features songs by artists including: "Poison Lips" by Vitalic; "Dubstride" by Yann McCullough and Gemma Kicks; "Snuffbox" by Matt Berry; "Pontiac Moon" by Robert J. Walsh; and "Jubilee (Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around)" by Bobby Womack.


title: Dredd

text: In August 2012, the viral advertising site "Dredd Report" was launched, satirising the Drudge Report. The site featured a video condemning the use of Slo-Mo, and links to news about the film. A tie-in comic book was published; its plot serves as a prequel to the film's narrative and follows Ma-Ma's life as a prostitute, controlled by her pimp Lester Grimes. Ma-Ma forms a relationship with Eric—the creator of Slo-Mo. Lester kills Eric for interfering with his business, Ma-Ma castrates Lester with her teeth in retaliation and Ma-Ma takes over the Slo-Mo operation. The comic was written by "Judge Dredd Megazine" editor Matt Smith, drawn by "2000 AD" artist Henry Flint and was released on 5 September 2012. An exclusive film poster featuring artwork by Jock was released by Mondo to promote the film's appearance at the 2012 Fantastic Fest in September 2012.


title: Dredd

text: "Dredd"s marketing campaign won a Golden Trailer Award for "Best Thriller TV Spot" for the trailer "Big Addicted", and received nominations for: "Best Action TV Spot", "Most Original TV Spot", "Best Graphics in a TV Spot", "Best Music TV Spot", and "Best Action Poster" and "Most Original Poster" for the "Dredd" motion poster. Reports indicate that Lionsgate contributed $25 million to advertising and print costs.


title: Dredd

text: Urban has criticised the film's marketing campaign, saying that the film had "zero audience awareness. Nobody knew the movie was being released. "Dredd" represents a failure in marketing, not filmmaking."


title: Dredd

text: "Dredd" premiered at the San Diego Comic-Con International on 11 July 2012. It was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September, and at the Fantastic Fest in late September. The film was first theatrically released on 7 September in the UK and on 21 September worldwide. A South African release followed on 28 September.


title: Dredd

text: "Dredd" earned $27.6 million from markets outside of North America and $13.4 million from North America, for a total of $41 million. In the UK, "Dredd" grossed £1.05 million ($1.7 million) from 415 cinemas during its opening weekend. This made it the weekend's number-one film, the first film restricted to audiences over 18 years of age to do so since "Saw 3D" in 2010. In its second weekend, the film placed number five, earning £769,381. "Dredd" was primarily shown in 3D in the UK, and 2D screenings were notoriously limited as the distributor denied cinemas' requests for 2D prints; the decision was considered to have limited the film's audience where 2D was their preferred format. "Dredd" earned a total of $6.9 million in the UK.


title: Dredd

text: In North America, pre-release tracking estimated that the film would gross between $8 and $10 million during its opening weekend based on its adult rating and the poor reputation of the 1995 adaptation. The film earned $2.2 million on its opening day and finished the weekend in sixth place, grossing $6.3 million from 2,506 cinemas—an average of $2,514 per cinema. The largest demographic of the opening weekend audience was over the age of 25 (69%) and male (75%). The film's North American run ended on 1 November 2012, after 42 days. Outside of the UK and North America, "Dredd" had its most successful total gross takings in China ($4.5 million), Russia ($4 million), and Australia ($2 million).


title: Dredd

text: Since its premiere screening at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International, "Dredd" received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 79%, based on 169 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Fueled by bombastic violence and impressive special effects, rooted in self-satire and deadpan humor, "Dredd 3D" does a remarkable job of capturing its source material's gritty spirit." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 60 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on a scale of A+ to F. Some reviewers enjoyed its take on the titular character, IGN praising it as a "character study".


title: Dredd

text: Urban's acting was frequently praised, particularly his ability to perform a characterless figure. "Entertainment Weekly"s Darren Franich enjoyed his "credibly wry performance using little more than his gravelly, imitation-[Clint] Eastwood voice—and his chin". Indiewire argued that with the film, he "continues to distinguish himself as a versatile performer who turns mimicry into emotional meaning". "Variety"s Geoff Berkshire wrote the actor "does a fine job embodying the more mythic qualities of Dredd as an upright law enforcer no lowlife would want to confront".


title: Dredd

text: Thirlby's Anderson was also highlighted, such as by Berkshire for carrying the film's emotional story and said, "one of the film's true thrills comes in watching Thirlby effortlessly balance the conflict between a Judge's merciless duties and a psychic's compassionate understanding." The "New Statesman"s Laura Sneddon noted that "Dredd" passed the Bechdel test, lacking in sexism or misogyny and positively portraying female characters who are no weaker, more sexualised or shown less than their male counterparts. Sneddon described Anderson as repeatedly shown to have power over men who underestimate her, while Ma-Ma displays more intelligence and sadism than any of her male gang members, and neither woman interacts with the other on the basis of their gender.


title: Dredd

text: Many US newspaper critics were less taken with the film. Mark Olsen of the "Los Angeles Times" called it "a clunk-headed action picture" that "simply becomes a monotonous series of bad-guy confrontations". Frank Lovece of "Newsday" described it as a "soullessly gritty" film, which apart from one believable scene involving Thirlby, is "all tough-guy talk and humorless cynicism". Stephen Whitty of "The Star-Ledger" called it a "gray and ugly film", said that there was little to draw viewers in, and wrote that apart from the drug-induced slow-motion sequences, the film offers nothing new. "The Hollywood Reporter"s Stephen Dalton wrote that the "dark, ironic, very British humour of the original strip" was largely absent from the film and that "[t]he limited location, computer game-style plot and muted humour" of the film might disappoint some fans of the comic. Dalton also said that Urban's performance, while close to the comic, lacked something. Overall Dalton said, "[p]itched at the right level to please original fans, but still slick and accessible enough to attract new ones, [Dredd] feels like a smart and muscular addition to the sci-fi action genre."


title: Dredd

text: The visual effects and slow-motion sequences induced by Slo-Mo received broad praise. Berkshire said that they are notable and eye-catching with "impressively utilised 3D." Hewitt said the visuals were "genuinely surreal splashes of heightened colour that ... don't outstay their welcome. The film's use of 3D is often excellent (including the credits) and it really comes to life in the Slo-mo scenes". Dalton said the film "constantly impresses on a visual level, with a gritty style more akin to cult hits like "District 9" or "28 Days Later" than to standard Hollywood comic-book blockbusters." Dalton said, "[Mantle's] first venture into 3D is a blaze of saturated colours, gorgeous high-resolution close-ups and dazzling slow-motion sequences." "Dredd" won "The Art of 3D" award at the 2013 Empire Awards, and was nominated for "Best British Film" and "Best Science-fiction/Fantasy".


title: Dredd

text: "Judge Dredd" creator John Wagner, who had been critical of the 1995 adaptation, gave a positive review of "Dredd". He said: "I liked the movie. It was, unlike the first film, a true representation of Judge Dredd ... Karl Urban was a fine Dredd and I'd be more than happy to see him in the follow-up. Olivia Thirlby excelled as Anderson ... The character and storyline are pure Dredd." "Dredd" has been recognised as a cult film since its release. Some reviewers drew comparisons between "Dredd" and "", another action film released a few months earlier, noting that similar elements in setting, story, and characters made "Dredd" appear derivative. However, Garland and Urban explained that the timing of when the films were shot would have made plagiarism impossible.


title: Dredd

text: "Dredd" was released on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download on 8 January 2013 in North America, and 14 January in the UK. The Blu-ray edition contains the 2D and 3D versions of the film and a digital copy. The DVD and Blu-ray editions contain seven featurettes: "Mega-City Masters: 35 Years of Judge Dredd", "Day of Chaos: The Visual Effects of "Dredd" 3D", "Dredd", "Dredd's Gear", "The 3rd Dimension", "Welcome to Peachtrees", and a ""Dredd" Motion Comic Prequel" narrated by Urban. During its first week on sale in the UK, "Dredd" was the number 1 selling DVD and Blu-ray. During the week of its release in North America, it was the number 1 selling DVD and Blu-ray with approximately 650,000 units sold, and Blu-ray units accounting for nearly 50% of that figure. It was also the best-selling digital download for that period. Sales spiked in the United Kingdom in June 2013, following a reported rumour that it could influence DNA Films' decision to pursue a sequel. By September 2013, "Dredd" was estimated to have earned approximately $10 million in home media sales in North America, while in the UK it marked over 270 days in online-retailer Amazon's top 100 selling home media. By July 2017, this sales figure was estimated to have increased to $20 million.


title: Dredd

text: At the London Film and Comic Con in July 2012, Garland said that a North American gross of over $50 million for "Dredd" would make sequels possible and that he had plans for a trilogy of films. A second film would focus on the origins of Dredd and Mega-City One, and a third would introduce Dredd's nemeses, the undead Judge Death and his Dark Judges. In August 2012, Garland said that a Judge Dredd television series would be a positive future step for the series. In September 2012, Garland said that he would explore the "Origins" and "Democracy" storylines, would introduce characters Judge Cal and Chopper, and would pursue the concept that Judge Dredd is a fascist. That same month, Macdonald said that further films would be made in partnership with IM Global and would likely be shot in South Africa.


title: Dredd

text: In March 2013, executive producer Adi Shankar said that a sequel was unlikely. In May 2013, Urban said that a sequel was still possible, noting that the film had found an audience, and the response of fans could resurrect the project. "Dredd" fans on Facebook launched a petition calling for a sequel. In July 2013, "2000 AD" endorsed the fan petition, supporting the campaign by printing advertisements in their publications, and by September 2013 it had attracted over 80,000 signatures. In April 2013, "2000 AD" released an image teasing a continuation of the film in comic book form with a release date scheduled for September 2013. The comic, titled "Dredd: Underbelly", was made available in "Judge Dredd Megazine" #340 which was released on 18 September 2013. In October 2014, Shankar announced the production of an unofficial spinoff online series based on the Dark Judges that would be released later that month. The animated miniseries was titled "Judge Dredd: Superfiend" and all its six episodes were released on 27 October 2014 on YouTube. In March 2015, Garland said that a direct sequel would likely not happen in the near future, at least not with the crew involved in the original film.


title: Dredd

text: In 2016, Urban said that "conversations are happening" regarding a "Dredd" continuation on streaming services Netflix or Amazon Prime. In an interview in May 2016, Urban said that while the film's "mishandled" marketing strategy and "unfortunate" box office performance meant that it was "problematic" to try to make a sequel, "the success it has achieved in all post-theatrical mediums has definitely strengthened the argument in favour of a sequel." In May 2017, a television series named "Judge Dredd: Mega-City One" was announced to be in development by IM Global Television and Rebellion. In August 2017, Urban stated he was in discussion to star in the series.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English (specifically, American English), which is the de facto national language. It is also the only language spoken at home by the great majority of the U.S. population (approximately 78.5%). Many other languages are also spoken at home, especially Spanish (13.2% of the population), according to the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau; these include indigenous languages and languages brought to the U.S. by people from Europe, Africa, and Asia. However, the majority of speakers of these languages are bilingual and also speak English. Although 21.5% of U.S. residents report that they speak a language other than English at home, only 8.2% speak English less than "very well." Several other languages, notably creoles and sign languages, have developed in the United States. Approximately 430 languages are spoken or signed by the population, of which 177 are indigenous to the area. At least fifty-two languages formerly spoken in the country's territory are now extinct.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Based on annual data from the American Community Survey, the United States Census Bureau regularly publishes information on the most common languages spoken at home. It also reports the English speaking ability of people who speak a language other than English at home. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau published information on the number of speakers of over 350 languages as surveyed by the ACS from 2009 to 2013, but it does not regularly tabulate and report data for that many languages.


title: Languages of the United States

text: According to the ACS in 2017, the most common languages spoken at home by people aged five years of age or older are as follows:


title: Languages of the United States

text: The ACS is not a full census but an annual sample-based survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The language statistics are based on responses to a three-part question asked about all members of a target U.S. household who are at least five years old. The first part asks if they "speak a language other than English at home." If so, the head of the household or main respondent is asked to report which language each member speaks in the home, and how well each individual speaks English. It does not ask how well individuals speak any other language of the household. Thus, some respondents might have only a limited speaking ability of that language. In addition, it is difficult to make historical comparisons of the numbers of speakers because language questions used by the U.S. Census changed numerous times before 1980.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The ACS does not tabulate the number of people who report the use of American Sign Language at home, so such data must come from other sources. While modern estimates indicate that American Sign Language was signed by as many as 500,000 Americans in 1972 (the last official survey of sign language), estimates as recently as 2011 were closer to 100,000. Various cultural factors, such as the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, have resulted in far greater educational opportunities for hearing-impaired children, which could double or triple the number of current users of American Sign Language.


title: Languages of the United States

text: English is the most common language spoken in the United States with approximately 239 million speakers. Spanish is spoken by approximately 35 million people. The United States has the world's fourth largest Spanish-speaking population, outnumbered only by Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina; other estimates put the United States at over 50 million, second only to Mexico. Throughout the Southwestern United States and Puerto Rico, long-established Spanish-speaking communities coexist with large numbers of more recent Hispanophone immigrants. Although many new Latin American immigrants are less than fluent in English, nearly all second-generation Hispanic Americans speak English fluently, while only about half still speak Spanish.


title: Languages of the United States

text: According to the 2000 U.S. Census, people of German ancestry made up the largest single ethnic group in the United States, but German language ranked fifth. Italian, Polish, and French are still widely spoken among populations descending from immigrants from those countries in the early 20th century, but the use of these languages is dwindling as the older generations die. Russian is also spoken by immigrant populations.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Tagalog and Vietnamese have over one million speakers each in the United States, almost entirely within recent immigrant populations. Both languages, along with the varieties of Chinese (mostly Cantonese, Taishanese, and Standard Mandarin), Japanese, and Korean, are now used in elections in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Native American languages are spoken in smaller pockets of the country, but these populations are decreasing, and the languages are almost never widely used outside of reservations. Besides English, Spanish, French, German, Navajo and other Native American languages, all other languages are usually learned from immigrant ancestors that came after the time of independence or learned through some form of education.


title: Languages of the United States

text: American Sign Language is the most common sign language in the United States although there are unrelated sign languages which have been developed in the States and territories—mostly in the Pacific. No concrete numbers exist for signers but something upwards of 250,000 is common.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is typically used at the federal level and in states without an official language. Outside of Puerto Rico, English is the primary language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements. Nonetheless, laws require documents such as ballots to be printed in multiple languages when there are large numbers of non-English speakers in an area.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Thirty-one states, in some cases as part of what has been called the English-only movement, have adopted legislation granting official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American".) Hawaiian, although having few native speakers, is an official language along with English of the state of Hawaii. Alaska has made some 20 native languages official, along with English; for example, Alaska provides voting information in English, Iñupiaq, Central Yup'ik, Gwich'in, Siberian Yupik, Koyukon, and Tagalog language. On July 1, 2019, a law went into effect making Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota the official indigenous languages of South Dakota.


title: Languages of the United States

text: French is a "de facto", but unofficial, language in Maine and Louisiana, while New Mexico law grants Spanish a special status. The government of Louisiana offers services and most documents in both English and French, and New Mexico does so in English and Spanish.


title: Languages of the United States

text: English is at least one of the official languages in all five permanently inhabited U.S. territories. In Puerto Rico both English and Spanish are official, although Spanish has been declared the principal official language. The school system and the government operate almost entirely in Spanish, but federal law requires the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico to use English, like the rest of the federal court system. Guam recognizes English and Chamorro. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, English is the only official language. In American Samoa, both English and Samoan are officially recognized; English is common but Samoan is also seen in some official communications. In the Northern Mariana Islands, English, Chamorro, and Carolinian are official.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In New Mexico, although the state constitution does not specify an official language, laws are published in English and Spanish, and government materials and services are legally required (by Act) to be made accessible to speakers of both languages as well as Navajo and various Pueblo languages. New Mexico also has its own dialect of Spanish, which differs from Spanish spoken in the rest of Latin America.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Algonquian, Cherokee, and Sioux are among many other Native American languages which are official or co-official on many U.S. Indian reservations and Pueblos. In Oklahoma before statehood in 1907, territory officials debated whether or not to have Cherokee, Choctaw, and Muscogee languages as co-official, but the idea never gained ground. Cherokee is officially recognized by the Cherokee Nation within the Cherokee tribal jurisdiction area in eastern Oklahoma.


title: Languages of the United States

text: After New Amsterdam (formerly a Dutch colony) was transferred to English administration (becoming the Province of New York) in the late 17th century, English supplanted Dutch as the official language. However, "Dutch remained the primary language for many civil and ecclesiastical functions and most private affairs for the next century." The Jersey Dutch dialect is now extinct.


title: Languages of the United States

text: California has agreed to allow the publication of state documents in other languages to represent minority groups and immigrant communities. Languages such as Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Persian, Russian, Vietnamese, and Thai appear in official state documents, and the Department of Motor Vehicles publishes in nine languages.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The issue of multilingualism also applies in the states of Arizona and Texas. While the constitution of Texas has no official language policy, Arizona passed a proposition in 2006 declaring English as the official language. Nonetheless, Arizona law requires the distribution of voting ballots in Spanish, as well as indigenous languages such as Navajo, O'odham and Hopi, in counties where they are spoken.


title: Languages of the United States

text: A popular urban legend called the Muhlenberg legend claims that German was almost made an official language of the United States but lost by one vote. In reality, it was a request by a group of German immigrants to have an official translation of laws into German. House speaker Frederick Muhlenberg has since become associated with the legend.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Bilingual education in the United States, often a different concept from language immersion or dual-language school programs, is an area of political controversy. In standard bilingual classes, the non-English language (typically Spanish or Chinese) is utilized over a period of time when students' English-language proficiency is lacking. Otherwise the medium of instruction at almost all U.S. schools, at all levels, is English. The exceptions are in language classes such as French or German, or in general education in the territory of Puerto Rico, where Spanish is standard. English is the language of instruction in the territory of American Samoa, despite most students speaking Samoan as their native language.


title: Languages of the United States

text: There are also hundreds of language immersion and dual-language schools across the United States that teach in a variety of languages, including Spanish, Hawaiian, Chomorro, French, and Mandarin Chinese (for example, the Mandarin Immersion Magnet School in Texas). However, English is a mandatory class in all these schools.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Native American languages predate European settlement of the New World. In a few parts of the U.S. (mostly on Indian reservations), they continue to be spoken fluently. Most of these languages are endangered, although there are efforts to revive them. Normally the fewer the speakers of a language the greater the degree of endangerment, but there are many small Native American language communities in the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) which continue to thrive despite their small size.


title: Languages of the United States

text: According to the 2000 Census and other language surveys, the largest Native American language-speaking community by far is the Navajo. Navajo is an Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené family, with 178,000 speakers, primarily in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Altogether, Navajo speakers make up more than 50% of all Native American language speakers in the United States. Western Apache, with 12,500 speakers, also mostly in Arizona, is closely related to Navajo but not mutually intelligible with it. Navajo and other Athabaskan languages in the Southwest are relative outliers; most other Athabascan languages are spoken in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Navajo has struggled to keep a healthy speaker base, although this problem has been alleviated to some extent by extensive education programs in the Navajo Nation, including a Navajo language immersion school in Fort Defiance, Arizona.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Cherokee is the Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people, and the official language of the Cherokee Nation. Significant numbers of Cherokee speakers of all ages still populate the Qualla Boundary in Cherokee, North Carolina and several counties within the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, significantly Cherokee, Sequoyah, Mayes, Adair, and Delaware. Increasing numbers of Cherokee youth are renewing interest in the traditions, history, and language of their ancestors. Cherokee-speaking communities stand at the forefront of language preservation, and at local schools, all lessons are taught in Cherokee and thus it serves as the medium of instruction from pre-school on up. Also, church services and traditional ceremonial stomp dances are held in the language in Oklahoma and on the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Cherokee is one of the few, or perhaps the only, Native American language with an increasing population of speakers, and along with Navajo it is the only indigenous American language with more than 50,000 speakers, a figure most likely achieved through the tribe's 10-year long language preservation plan involving growing new speakers through immersion schools for children, developing new words for modern phrases, teaching the language to non-Cherokees in schools and universities, fostering the language among young adults so their children can use that language at home, developing iPhone and iPad apps for language education, the development of Cherokee language radio stations including Cherokee Voices, Cherokee Sounds, and promoting the writing system through public signage, products like the Apple iPhone, internet use through Google including Gmail, and others so the language remains relevant in the 21st century.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Dakota is a Siouan language with 18,000 speakers in the US alone (22,000 including speakers in Canada), not counting 6,000 speakers of the closely related Lakota. Most speakers live in the states of North Dakota and South Dakota. Other Siouan languages include the closely related Winnebago, and the more distant Crow, among others.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Central Alaskan Yup'ik is an Eskimo–Aleut language with 16,000 speakers, most of whom live in Alaska. The term "Yupik" is applied to its relatives, which are not necessarily mutually intelligible with Central Alaskan, including Naukan and Central Siberian, among others.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The O'odham language, spoken by the Pima and the Tohono O'odham, is a Uto-Aztecan language with more than 12,000 speakers, most of whom live in central and southern Arizona and northern Sonora. Other Uto-Aztecan languages include Hopi, Shoshone, and the Pai-Ute languages.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Keres has 11,000 speakers in New Mexico and is a language isolate. The Keres pueblo people are the largest of the Pueblo nations. The Keres pueblo of Acoma is the oldest continually inhabited community in the United States. Zuni, another isolate, has around 10,000 speakers, most of whom reside within the Zuni pueblo.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Because of immigration from Mexico, there are Mexican native American languages speakers in the US. There are thousands of Nahuatl, Mixtec, Zapotec and Trique speakers in communities established mainly in the southern states.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Although the languages of the Americas have a history stretching back about 17,000 to 12,000 years, current knowledge of them is limited. There are doubtlessly a number of undocumented languages that were once spoken in the United States that are missing from historical record.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Below is an estimate of Native American languages "spoken at home" in the United States (American Community Survey 2006–2008). This is not an exhaustive list of Native American languages in the US. Because the distinction between dialect and language isn't always clear, multiple dialects of varying mutual intelligibility may be classified as a single language, while a group of effectively identical dialects may be classified separately for historical or cultural reasons. Languages included here may be classified as "extinct" (having no living native speakers), but many extinct or moribund Native American languages are the subjects of ongoing language revitalization efforts; other extinct languages undergoing revitalization might not be listed here.


title: Languages of the United States

text: A sign-language trade pidgin, known as Plains Indian Sign Language, Plains Standard or Plains Sign Talk, arose among the Native Americans of the plains. Each signing nation had a separate signed version of their oral language, that was used by the hearing, and these were not mutually intelligible. Plains Standard was used to communicate between these nations. It seems to have started in Texas and then spread north, through the Great Plains, as far as British Columbia. There are still a few users today, especially among the Crow, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Unlike other sign languages developed by hearing people, it shares the spatial grammar of deaf sign languages. Through intergenerational transmission, Plains Sign Talk became a working language still in use today in some Deaf First Nations or Native American communities.


title: Languages of the United States

text: As Plains Sign Talk was so widespread and was a spectrum of dialects and accents, it probably hosted several languages under its umbrella. One is potentially Navajo Sign Language which is in use by a sole Navajo clan.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Additionally, Plateau Sign Language existed alongside Plains Sign Talk as either a trade pidgin or another language around the Columbia Plateau and surrounding regions.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Hawaiian is an official state language of Hawaii as prescribed in the Constitution of Hawaii. Hawaiian has 1,000 native speakers. Formerly considered critically endangered, Hawaiian is showing signs of language renaissance. The recent trend is based on new Hawaiian language immersion programs of the Hawaii State Department of Education and the University of Hawaii, as well as efforts by the Hawaii State Legislature and county governments to preserve Hawaiian place names. In 1993, about 8,000 could speak and understand it; today estimates range up to 27,000. Hawaiian is related to the Māori language spoken by around 150,000 New Zealanders and Cook Islanders as well as the Tahitian language which is spoken by another 120,000 people of Tahiti.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Samoan is an official territorial language of American Samoa. Samoans make up 90% of the population, and most people are bilingual.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Chamorro is co-official in the Mariana Islands, both in the territory of Guam and in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In Guam, the indigenous Chamorro people make up about 60% of the population.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Carolinian is also co-official in the Northern Marianas, where only 14% of people speak English at home.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Some of the first European languages to be spoken in the U.S. were English, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Swedish.


title: Languages of the United States

text: From the mid-19th century on, the nation had large numbers of immigrants who spoke little or no English, and throughout the country state laws, constitutions, and legislative proceedings appeared in the languages of politically important immigrant groups. There have been bilingual schools and local newspapers in such languages as German, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Greek, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Czech, Japanese, Yiddish, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Welsh, Cantonese, Bulgarian, Dutch, Portuguese and others, despite opposing English-only laws that, for example, illegalized church services, telephone conversations, and even conversations in the street or on railway platforms in any language other than English, until the first of these laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1923 ("Meyer v. Nebraska").


title: Languages of the United States

text: Typically, immigrant languages tend to be lost through assimilation within two or three generations, though there are some groups such as the Louisiana Creoles (French), Pennsylvania Dutch (German) in a state where large numbers of people were heard to speak it before the 1950s, and the original settlers of the Southwest (Spanish) who have maintained their languages for centuries.


title: Languages of the United States

text: English was inherited from British colonization, and it is spoken by the majority of the population. English has become increasingly common; when the United States was founded, 40% of Americans spoke English. In 2002, 87% of Americans spoke English as their first language. It serves as the de facto national language, the language in which government business is carried out. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 80% spoke only English at home and all but approximately 13,600,000 U.S. residents age 5 and over speak English "well" or "very well".


title: Languages of the United States

text: American English is different from British English in terms of spelling (one example being the dropped "u" in words such as color/colour), grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and slang usage. The differences are not usually a barrier to effective communication between an American English and a British English speaker.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Some states, like California, have amended their constitutions to make English the only official language, but in practice, this only means that official government documents must "at least" be in English, and "does not" mean that they should be exclusively available only in English. For example, the standard California Class C driver's license examination is available in 32 different languages.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Spanish was also inherited from colonization and is sanctioned as official in the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, where it is the general language of instruction in schools and universities. In the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all territories except Puerto Rico, Spanish is taught as a foreign or second language. It is spoken at home in areas with large Hispanic populations: the Southwestern United States along the border with Mexico, as well as in Florida, parts of California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. In Hispanic communities across the country, bilingual signs in both Spanish and English may be quite common. Furthermore, numerous neighborhoods exist (such as Washington Heights in New York City or Little Havana in Miami) in which entire city blocks will have only Spanish-language signs and Spanish-speaking people.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Younger generations of non-Hispanics in the United States choose to study Spanish as a foreign or second language in far greater numbers than other second-language options. This might be due in part to the growing Hispanic population and the increasing popularity of Latin American movies and music performed in the Spanish language. A 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the United States Census Bureau, showed that Spanish was spoken at home by over 35 million people aged 5 or older, making the United States the world's fifth-largest Spanish-speaking community, outnumbered only by Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Argentina. Since then, the number of persons reported on the ACS to speak Spanish at home has increased (see table).


title: Languages of the United States

text: In northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, Spanish speakers have been isolated for centuries in the southern Rockies, and developed a distinct dialect of Spanish spoken nowhere else: New Mexican Spanish. The dialect features a mix of Castilian, Galician and, more recently, Mexican Spanish, as well as Pueblo loan words. New Mexican Spanish also contains a large proportion of English loan words, particularly for technological words (e.g. "bos", "troca", and "telefón").


title: Languages of the United States

text: Speakers of New Mexican Spanish are mainly descendants of Spanish colonists who arrived in New Mexico in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. During this time, contact with the rest of Spanish America was limited, and New Mexican Spanish developed on its own course. In the meantime, Spanish colonists coexisted with and intermarried with Puebloan peoples and Navajos. After the Mexican–American War, New Mexico and all its inhabitants came under the governance of the English-speaking United States, and for the next hundred years, English-speakers increased in number.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Puerto Rican Spanish is the main language and dialect of the people of Puerto Rico, as well as many people descended from Puerto Ricans elsewhere throughout the United States.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Spanglish is a code-switching variant of Spanish and English and is spoken in areas with large bilingual populations of Spanish and English speakers, such as along the Mexico–United States border (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), Florida, and New York City.


title: Languages of the United States

text: French, the fourth-most-common language (when all varieties of French are combined and separate yet related languages such as Haitian Creole are counted as French), is spoken mainly by the Louisiana Creole, native French, Cajun, Haitian, and French-Canadian populations. It is widely spoken in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and in Louisiana, with notable Francophone enclaves in St. Clair County, Michigan, many rural areas of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the northern San Francisco Bay area. Because of its legacy in Louisiana, that state is served by the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), the only state agency in the United States whose mission is to serve a linguistic population. In October 2018, Louisiana became the first U.S. state to join the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Three varieties of French developed within what is now the United States in colonial times including Louisiana French, Missouri French, and New England French (essentially a variant of Canadian French). French is the second-most-spoken language in the states of Louisiana and Maine. The largest French-speaking communities in the United States reside in Northeast Maine; Hollywood and Miami, Florida; New York City; certain areas of rural Louisiana; and small minorities in Vermont and New Hampshire. Many of the New England communities are connected to the dialect found across the border in Quebec or New Brunswick. More than 13 million Americans possess primary French heritage, but only 2 million speak French, or any regional creoles and variations language at home. The largest concentration of French speakers in the country was in Louisiana.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Louisiana French (; ) is an umbrella term for the dialects and varieties of the French language spoken traditionally in colonial Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisiana French is primarily used in the U.S. state of Louisiana, specifically in the southern parishes.


title: Languages of the United States

text: French is spoken across ethnic and racial lines by Louisiana French people who may identify as Cajuns or Creoles as well as Chitimacha, Houma, Biloxi, Tunica, Choctaw, Acadians, and French Indian among others. For these reasons, as well as the relatively small influence Acadian French has had on the region, the label Louisiana French or Louisiana Regional French () is generally regarded as more accurate and inclusive than "Cajun French" and is the preferred term by linguists and anthropologists. However, "Cajun French" is commonly used in lay discourse by speakers of the language and other inhabitants of Louisiana.


title: Languages of the United States

text: German was a widely spoken language in some of the colonies, especially Pennsylvania, where a number of German-speaking Protestants and other religious minorities settled to escape persecution in Europe. Another wave of settlement occurred when Germans fleeing the failure of 19th Century German revolutions emigrated to the United States. A large number of these German immigrants settled in the urban areas, with neighborhoods in many cities being German-speaking and numerous local German language newspapers and periodicals established. German farmers also took up farming around the country, including the Texas Hill Country, at this time. The language was widely spoken until the United States entered World War I.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In the early twentieth century, German was the most widely studied foreign language in the United States, and prior to World War I, more than 6% of American schoolchildren received their primary education exclusively in German, though some of these Germans came from areas outside of Germany proper. Currently, more than 49 million Americans claim German ancestry, the largest self-described ethnic group in the U.S., but less than 4% of them speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2005 American Community Survey. The Amish speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch. One reason for this decline of German language was the perception during both World Wars that speaking the language of the enemy was unpatriotic; foreign language instruction was banned in places during the First World War. Unlike earlier waves, they were more concentrated in cities and integrated quickly. Another reason for the decline in German was the lack of first-generation immigrants, as immigration to the United States from Western Europe slowed following the World Wars.


title: Languages of the United States

text: There is a myth (known as the Muhlenberg Vote) that German was to be the official language of the U.S., but this is inaccurate and based on a failed early attempt to have government documents translated into German. The myth also extends to German being the second official language of Pennsylvania; however, Pennsylvania has no official language. Although more than 49 million Americans claim they have German ancestors, only 1.24 million Americans speak German at home. Many of these people are either Amish and Mennonites or Germans having newly immigrated (e.g. for professional reasons).


title: Languages of the United States

text: Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German is a Palatine Rhine Franconian language that traditionally was spoken mainly in Pennsylvania, but that since the 19th century has spread to the Midwest (Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and other states), where the majority of speakers live today. It evolved from the German dialect of the Palatinate brought over to America by the Pennsylvania Dutch people before 1800. Originally spoken by adherents of different Christian denominations (Lutherans, Mennonites, Amish, German Baptist Brethren, Catholics) today it is mainly spoken by Amish and Old Order Mennonites.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Texas German is a group of High German dialects spoken by German Texans, descendants of German immigrants who settled in Texas in the mid-19th century.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The Russian language is spoken in areas of some states, including New York, California, Washington, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Alaska. It is especially spoken in immigrant neighborhoods of some cities: New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Sacramento, Spokane, Miami, Vancouver, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and Woodburn, Oregon. The Russian-American Company owned most all of what became Alaska Territory until its sale right after the Crimean War. The presence of Russian speakers in the United States had always been limited, especially after the assassination of the Romanov dynasty of tsars. Starting in the 1970s and continuing until the mid-1990s, however, many Russian-speaking people from the Soviet Union and later its constituent republics such as Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan have immigrated to the United States, increasing the use of Russian in the country.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The largest Russian-speaking neighborhoods in the United States are found in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island in New York City (specifically the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn); parts of Los Angeles, particularly West Los Angeles and West Hollywood; parts of Philadelphia, particularly the Far Northeast; and parts of Miami like Sunny Isles Beach.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The Russian-language media group Slavic Voice of America, based in Dallas, Texas, serves Russian-speaking Americans.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Alaskan Russian, known locally as Old Russian, is a dialect of Russian influenced by the Alutiiq language spoken by Alaskan Creoles. Most of its speakers lived on Kodiak Island and in the Ninilchik (Kenai Peninsula). It has been isolated from other varieties of Russian for over a century.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Kodiak Russian was natively spoken along the Afognak Strait until the Great Alaskan earthquake and tsunami of 1964. It has become moribund, spoken by only a handful of elderly people, and is virtually undocumented.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Ninilchik Russian has been better studied and is more vibrant, though it is now also moribund. It developed from the Russian colonial settlement of the village of Ninilchik in 1847.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Ninilchik Russian vocabulary is clearly Russian, with a few borrowings from English and Alaskan native languages.


title: Languages of the United States

text: There has been a Dutch presence in America since 1602 when the government of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands chartered the Dutch East India Company ("Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie", or VOC) with the mission of exploring for a passage to the Indies and claiming any uncharted territories for the Dutch republic. In 1664, English troops under the command of the Duke of York (later James II of England) attacked the New Netherland colony. Being greatly outnumbered, director general Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam, with Fort Orange following soon. New Amsterdam was renamed New York, Fort Orange was renamed Fort Albany. Dutch city names can still be found in New York's neighbourhoods. Harlem is named after Haarlem, Staten Island is named after Staten Eiland, and Brooklyn is named after Breukelen.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In a 1990 demographic consensus, 3% of surveyed citizens claimed descent from Dutch settlers. Modern estimates place the Dutch American population at 5 million, lagging just a bit behind Scottish Americans and Swedish Americans.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Around 142,000 people in the United States still speak the Dutch language at home as of 2013, in addition to 23,000 speakers of the closely related Afrikaans. They are concentrated mainly in California (23,500), Florida (10,900), Pennsylvania (9,900), Ohio (9,600), New York (8,700) and Michigan (6,600; i.e. almost entirely in the city of Holland).


title: Languages of the United States

text: A vernacular dialect of Dutch known as Jersey Dutch was spoken by the New York & Jersey Dutch between the start of the 17th century to the mid-20th century. With the beginning of the 20th century, usage of the language became restricted to internal family circles, with an ever-growing number of people abandoning the language in favor of English. It suffered gradual decline throughout the 20th century, and it ultimately dissipated from casual usage.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Dutch was still spoken in many parts of New York at the time of the Revolution. For example, Alexander Hamilton's wife Eliza Hamilton attended a Dutch-language church during their marriage.


title: Languages of the United States

text: African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth (born "Isabella Baumfree") was a native speaker of Dutch.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Martin Van Buren, the first President born in the United States following its independence, spoke Dutch as his native language, making him the only President whose first language was not English.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Notable Dutch Americans include the Roosevelts (Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt), Marlon Brando, Thomas Alva Edison, Martin Van Buren and the Vanderbilts. The Roosevelts are direct descendants of Dutch settlers of the New Netherland colony in the 17th century.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The population of Chinese speakers in the United States was increasing rapidly in the 20th century because the number of Chinese immigrants has increased at a rate of more than 50% since 1940. 2.8 million Americans speak some variety of Chinese, which combined are counted by the federal census as the third most-spoken language in the country. Until the late 20th century, Yue dialects, including Taishanese and Cantonese, were the most common dialects among immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, especially in California. Since the opening of the People's Republic of China, Mandarin, the official language in the PRC and Republic of China (Taiwan), has become increasingly prevalent. Many Americans of all ethnic backgrounds are also learning Mandarin and, to a far lesser extent, Cantonese.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In New York City in 2002, Mandarin was spoken as a native language among only 10% of Chinese speakers but was predicted to replace Cantonese as the lingua franca among Chinese speakers.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Tagalog speakers were already present in the United States as early as the late sixteenth century as sailors contracted by the Spanish colonial government. In the eighteenth century, they established settlements in Louisiana, such as Saint Malo. After the American annexation of the Philippines, the number of Tagalog speakers steadily increased, as Filipinos began to migrate to the U.S. as students or contract laborers. Their numbers, however, decreased upon Philippine independence, as some Filipinos were repatriated.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Today, Tagalog, together with its standardized form Filipino, is spoken by over a million and a half Filipino Americans and is promoted by Filipino American civic organizations and Philippine consulates. As Filipinos are the second largest Asian ethnic group in the United States, Tagalog is the second most spoken Asian language in the country, after Chinese. Taglish, a form of code-switching between Tagalog and English, is also spoken by a number of Filipino Americans.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Tagalog is also taught at some universities where a significant number of Filipinos exist. As it is the national and most spoken language of the Philippines, most Filipinos in the United States are proficient in Tagalog in addition to their local regional language.


title: Languages of the United States

text: According to the 2010 Census, there are over 1.5 million Americans who identify themselves as Vietnamese in origin, ranking fourth among the Asian American groups and forming the largest Overseas Vietnamese population.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Orange County, California, is home to the largest concentration of ethnic Vietnamese outside Vietnam, especially in its Little Saigon area. Other significant Vietnamese communities are found in the metropolitan areas of San Jose, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle, Northern Virginia, and New Orleans. Similarly to other overseas Vietnamese communities in Western countries (except France), the Vietnamese population in the United States was established following the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and communist takeover of South Vietnam following the Vietnam War.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In 2011 over 1.1 million Americans spoke Korean at home. This number increased greatly at the end of the 20th century, increasing 327% from the 300,000 speakers in 1980. The greatest concentration of these speakers was in the Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C. metro areas. Speakers of Korean are found in the Koreatowns.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Varieties of Arabic are spoken by immigrants from the Middle East as well as many Muslim Americans. The highest concentrations of native Arabic speakers reside in heavily urban areas like Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles. Detroit and the surrounding areas of Michigan boast a significant Arabic-speaking population including many Arab Christians of Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian descent.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Arabic is used for religious purposes by Muslim Americans and by some Arab Christians (notably Catholics of the Melkite and Maronite Churches as well as Rum Orthodox, i.e. Antiochian Orthodox Christians and Coptic churches.). A significant number of educated Arab professionals who immigrate often already know English quite well, as it is widely used in the Middle East. Lebanese immigrants also have a broader understanding of French as do many Arabic-speaking immigrants from North Africa.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The Italian language and other Italo-Dalmatian languages have been widely spoken in the United States for more than one hundred years, primarily due to large-scale immigration from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In addition to Italian learned by most people today, there has been a strong representation of the languages of Southern Italy amongst the immigrant population (Sicilian and Neapolitan in particular). As of 2009, though 15,638,348 American citizens report themselves as Italian-Americans, only 753,992 of these report speaking the Italian language at home (0.3264% of the US population).


title: Languages of the United States

text: The first Finnish settlers in America were amongst the settlers who came from Sweden and Finland to the New Sweden colony. Most colonists were Finnish. However, the Finnish language was not preserved as well among subsequent generations as Swedish.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Between the 1890s and the outbreak of the first World War, an estimated quarter million Finnish citizens immigrated to the United States, mainly in rural areas of the Midwest and more specifically in the mining regions of Northeastern Minnesota, Northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Hancock, Michigan, as of 2005, still incorporates bi-lingual street signs written in both English and Finnish. Americans of Finnish origin yield at 800,000 individuals, though only 26,000 speak the language at home. There is a distinctive dialect of English to be found in the Upper Peninsula, known as Yooper. Yooper often has a Finnish cadence and uses Finnish sentence structure with modified English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish vocabulary.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Notable Finnish Americans include U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall, film director Renny Harlin, and the Canadian-born actress Pamela Anderson.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Northern Clark County, Washington (encompassing Yacolt, Amboy, Battle Ground and Chelatchie) contains a large exclave of Old Apostolic Lutherans who originally immigrated from Finland. Many families in this portion of the county speak fluent Finnish at home before learning English. Another noteworthy Finnish community in the United States is found in Lake Worth, Florida, north of Miami.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Modern Hebrew is spoken by Israeli immigrants. Liturgical Hebrew is used as a religious or liturgical language by many of the United States' approximately 7 million Jews.


title: Languages of the United States

text: About 40 million Americans have Irish ancestry, many of whose ancestors would have spoken Irish Gaelic. In 2013, around 20,600 Americans spoke Irish at home and it was the 76th most spoken language in the United States. An additional 1,600 spoke Scottish Gaelic.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Between 1981 and 1985 about 150,000 Cambodians resettled in the United States. Before 1975 very few Cambodians came to the United States. Those who did were children of upper-class families sent abroad to attend school. After the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, some Cambodians managed to escape. In 2007 the American Community Survey reported that there were approximately 200,000 Cambodians living in the United States, making up about 2% percent of the Asian population. This population is, however, heavily concentrated in two areas: the Los Angeles metropolitan area in California, especially the city of Long Beach; and Greater Boston in New England, especially Lowell, Massachusetts. These two areas hold a majority of the Cambodians living in the US.


title: Languages of the United States

text: As of 2013, around 580,000 Americans spoke Polish at home. The Polish language is very common in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chicago's third largest white ethnic groups are those of Polish descent, after German and Irish. The Polish people and the Polish language in Chicago were very prevalent in the early years of the city, and today the 650,000 Poles in Chicago make up one of the largest ethnically Polish populations in the world, comparable to the city of Wrocław, the fourth largest city in Poland. That makes it one of the most important centers of Polonia and the Polish language in the United States, a fact that the city celebrates every Labor Day weekend at the Taste of Polonia Festival in Jefferson Park.


title: Languages of the United States

text: Texas Silesian, a dialect of the Silesian language (itself controversially considered a branch of Polish by some linguists), has been used by Texas Silesians in American settlements from 1852 to the present.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The first Portuguese speakers in America were Portuguese Jews who had fled the Portuguese Inquisition. They spoke Judeo-Portuguese and founded the earliest Jewish communities in the Thirteen Colonies, two of which still exist: Congregation Shearith Israel in New York and Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. However, by the end of the 18th century, their use of Portuguese had been replaced by English.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In the late 19th century, many Portuguese, mainly Azoreans, Madeirans and Cape Verdeans (who prior to independence in 1975 were Portuguese citizens), immigrated to the United States, settling in cities like Providence, Rhode Island, New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Santa Cruz, California. There was also a substantial Portuguese immigration to Hawaii, which at the time was not yet part of the United States.


title: Languages of the United States

text: In the mid-late 20th century there was another wave of Portuguese immigration to the US, mainly the Northeast (New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts), and for a time Portuguese became a major language in Newark, New Jersey. Many Portuguese Americans may include descendants of Portuguese settlers born in Portuguese Africa (known as Portuguese Africans, or, in Portugal, as "retornados") and Asia (mostly Macau). There were around 1 million Portuguese Americans in the United States by 2000. Portuguese (European Portuguese) has been spoken in the United States by small communities of immigrants, mainly in the metropolitan New York City area, like Newark, New Jersey.


title: Languages of the United States

text: The Portuguese language is also spoken widely by Brazilian Americans, concentrated in Miami, New York City, and Boston.


title: Languages of the United States

text: There has been a Swedish presence in America since the New Sweden colony came into existence in March 1638.