Es-Salamu Aleykum, my friends!
Anyone who harbored any doubts as to why one would have to learn or improve their Arabic must read today’s brand new تقريـــــــــر (report):
According to today’s MarketWatch, a report from Language Line Services, the world’s largest provider of language services, reveals that between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012, Arabic proved to be among the top spoken languages in الولايـــــــــــات المُتَّحـــــــــــدة الأمريــــــــــــكية (the United States) after Spanish.
Those of you who are not big fans of “الأخ الأكبـــــــــر” (“Big Brother”, that is) will naturally not be too thrilled to know how exactly this result was obtained:
“The quarterly Language Line LanguageTrak “Interpreter Demand Index” uses proprietary data from 20 million over-the-phone interpretation-request calls the company fields annually in 170-plus languages. The report tracks calls for the government and health care sectors across 20 major U.S. cities, and ranks the top-10 most requested languages in each location, as well as percentage growth for each language.”
It is particularly remarkable that the call tracking is said to be not only made on behalf of الحُكـــــــــــــومة (the government), but also for قِطــــــــــــاع الصِّحـــــــــة (the health care sector), which is widely referred to in the US as “Big Pharma.”
But let us not digress, shall we?
“These findings reflect the growing diversity of the communities Americans live in today,” said Louis F. Provenzano, Jr., president & CEO of Language Line Services.
“Arabic, Vietnamese and Mandarin have consistently been among the most-requested languages in the nation’s largest cities. Businesses, local governments, court systems, emergency services and healthcare agencies need to think beyond Spanish to ensure no one is left without critical services because of a language barrier.”
While الإسبـــــــــــــانيــــــــة (Spanish) remains the No. 1 language across the 20 U.S. cities in the report, Arabic is ranked among the top-three requested languages in nine of the 20 cities.
- Such data results are sure to emphasize the importance of reaching out to the Arab American minority in important Electoral times
In terms of نسبــــــــة الزِّيـــــــــــادة (the rate of increase), not only does Arabic exceed languages such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, but it exceeds Spanish language as well!
While Spanish interpretation requests increased in 14 of the 20 cities, Arabic requests increased in 17 of the 20, with the highest increases in فينـــــكس (Phoenix) by 60 percent, ممفيــــــــــــس (Memphis, also known in Arabic as “منـــــف”, after the original city in Egypt) by 59.6 percent, and ســــــــــان فرانسيسكـــــــــــو (San Francisco) by 55.6 percent.
