Quote:
Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin
Berlin, New Hampshire (I'm guessing it's that Berlin?) certainly is an interesting little place. It's one of the last (and largest) surviving Francophone communities in the US. Looks pretty too.
|
That's pretty outdated information. According to the 2013 US Community Survey, only 18% of the population in Berlin (New Hampshire) still speak French at home, and Berlin is far from being the largest Francophone community in the US.
The most Francophone community in the US is Madawaska (Maine), where 67% of the population still speak French at home, followed by Van Buren (Maine) where 61% speak French at home, and Fort Kent (Maine) where 56% speak French at home. These are the only 3 places left in the entire US where a majority of the population still speak French at home.
In Louisiana, the French language has declined so much (thanks in a large measure to the Roosevelt policies of the 1930s which forced children to go to English-language schools) that the most Francophone place in that state today, the small settlement of Choctaw (in the remote Baton Pilon bayou, near Thibodaux), has only 44% of its population speaking French at home. Thibodaux itself has only 4.5% of its population still speaking French at home.
If you're talking in terms of absolute numbers, then the largest Francophone community in the US is in... New York City (84,000 French speakers live there, to which could be added 110,000 French Creole speakers, mostly Haitians). In comparison Berlin (NH) has only 1,700 French speakers. North of Boston and south of Canada, the largest Francophone community is in Lewiston (Maine), where 4,800 people still spoke French at home in 2013, making up 14% of that city's population. In Madawaska they form 67% of the population but they are only 1,990, because Madawaska is smaller than Lewiston.