5. Beyond Spanish: Portuguese and indigenous language communities in Georgia

Over the last thirty years, the Southeastern United States has experienced considerable demographic shift, which has been accompanied by notable changes in language profiles as well. In addition to Spanish, the most widely attested language apart from English in these areas, a number of other languages have also expanded in recent years. This presentation considers two cases studies concerning such communities in the state of Georgia. Specifically, we seek to understand the situation of Portuguese and Latin American indigenous languages as represented in the 2000 and 2010 US Census data. Regarding the former, the population of speakers remained stable between 2000-2010 at approximately 13,000 speakers, constituting 2% of the total speakers of Portuguese in the United States. Brazilians have become a staple in the urban areas around Atlanta, contributing in a number of ways to the socioeconomic and cultural diversity of the region. Similarly, though resulting from distinct settlement patterns, there are populations who, according to the US Census data, are speakers of a number of indigenous languages spoken across Latin America, including Mapuche, Quechua, and “Mayan Languages”. These language communities, who are often second language speakers of Spanish, constitute distinct populations that are very often under-represented in the official Census data and are frequently conflated with other members of the Latinx community. This work seeks to address this gap in our understanding of the linguistic landscape of Georgia—and of the Southeastern US more generally—by offering a basic overview of these communities of practices.