Q. My English isn't good. Prewitt letting people know the forms are in the mail. That same number is the source of ''Language Guides,'' pages explaining how to fill out the forms, for individuals speaking languages ranging from Albanian to Yiddish, including Spanish, Amharic, Bengali, Chamorro, Creole, Serbo-Croatian, Kurdish, Romani, Dinka, Urdu, Tongan, Swahili and about three dozen more. The short form contains questions on name, sex, age, relationship to head of household, Hispanic origin, race and housing type. The long form, which goes to one in six households, has those questions plus additional questions on things like marital status, place of birth, occupation and income.
Every question is required to manage or evaluate one or another federal program or law.
Questions on age, for example, are used to identify voters for redistricting purposes, to project where hospitals are needed, to allocate school aid and analyze where new schools are needed and to forecast the number of people eligible for Medicare or Social Security. The feds use the answer to identify areas eligible for housing aide, cities use it to locate deficient housing and community agencies use it to target areas that need programs such as Meals on Wheels. Religion for one thing, officially because of constitutional separation between church and state. And the notion of collecting the names and addresses of people of various persuasions is distasteful. The census also is not interested in such topics as sexual orientation, where your parents were born, what they did for a living and how much they made, how much wealth your family has, what language your children speak at home and how many pets you have.