{"id":14743,"date":"2014-02-03T17:44:47","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T22:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/coke-america-the-beautiful-and-the-language-of-diversity\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:23:29","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:23:29","slug":"coke-america-the-beautiful-and-the-language-of-diversity","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/02\/03\/coke-america-the-beautiful-and-the-language-of-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Coke, \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d and the language of diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=443Vy3I0gJs<\/p>\n\n

Coca-Cola\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Beautiful\u201d ad, that aired during Sunday night\u2019s Super Bowl, sought to portray ethnic diversity in the U.S. by featuring \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d sung in several languages. The many different kinds of people in the ad \u2013 Hispanics, cowboys, Muslims, Jews and Asians \u2013 were all implicitly united by their identity as \u201cAmerican.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

But not everyone was happy with Coke\u2019s celebration of diversity in the country. After the ad was aired, Twitter lit up with commentary<\/a> \u00a0under various hashtags (such as #SpeakAmerican) critical of the company. Some commenters found it disrespectful to sing \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d in any language other than English, while others said immigrants need to learn English to live in the United States.<\/p>\n\n

\"FT_Coke_Language\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

So how linguistically diverse is the United States? Data from the 2011 American Community Survey (ACS)<\/a> show that 21% of Americans age five or older \u00a0speak a language other than English at home. Among this group, a majority say they speak English \u201cvery well\u201d (58%), and 19% say they speak English \u201cwell.\u201d Roughly one-in-seven (15%) of those who speak a language other than English at home say they do not speak English well, and 7% report having no English language skill at all.<\/p>\n\n

Other than English, the language most commonly spoken by Americans is Spanish<\/a>. ACS data show that 37.6 million Americans age five or older speak Spanish in their home. Other languages, including ones highlighted by the Coke commercial, have a much more limited presence. Chinese is spoken by 2.8 million Americans, Tagalog by 1.7 million Americans and Korean by 1.1 million Americans age five or older.<\/p>\n\n

The eight languages shown in the accompanying chart account for 83% of those Americans who speak a language other than English at home. In all, \u00a0there are 381 languages spoken in the U.S. that are counted by the Census Bureau, and detailed information is available for 106 of them.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coca-Cola\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Beautiful\u201d ad, that aired during Sunday night\u2019s Super Bowl, sought to portray ethnic diversity in the U.S. by featuring \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d sung in several languages. But not everyone was happy with Coke\u2019s celebration of diversity in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","sub_headline":null,"sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,305,348],"bylines":[990],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[517],"class_list":["post-14743","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-immigration-language-adoption","category-platforms-services","category-television","bylines-neha-sahgal","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-religion"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":314,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/02\/03\/coke-america-the-beautiful-and-the-language-of-diversity\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Coke, \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d and the language of diversity","description":"Coca-Cola\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Beautiful\u201d ad, that aired during Sunday night\u2019s Super Bowl, sought to portray ethnic diversity in the U.S. by featuring \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d sung in several languages. But not everyone was happy with Coke\u2019s celebration of diversity in the country.","og_title":"Coke, \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d and the language of diversity","og_description":"Coca-Cola\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Beautiful\u201d ad, that aired during Sunday night\u2019s Super Bowl, sought to portray ethnic diversity in the U.S. by featuring \u201cAmerica the Beautiful\u201d sung in several languages. But not everyone was happy with Coke\u2019s celebration of diversity in the country.","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"857f9de12b390c27bfb37a1c24288cf9","termId":990}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/short-read"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14743"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104029,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14743\/revisions\/104029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=14743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}