This Indian language is fastest growing in US

                   This Indian language is fastest growing in US

What is also interesting for India is that out of the top 10 fastest-growing languages in America, seven are from South Asia.

A recent study by an American think tank has revealed that Telugu is the fastest growing language in the US. The Centre for Immigration, which conducted the study, has revealed that the number of Telugu speakers among US residents rose by 86 per cent between 2010 and 2017. An explanatory video on this was released at the World Economic Forum.

However, despite this, Telugu is still not among the top 20 of the most widely-spoken languages -- other than English -- in the US, the BBC said in a report.

The video released by the World Economic Forum refers to a study by the Centre for Immigration, which analysed census data to look at the pace at which languages were being spoken in America, news agency IANS said.

The think tank had conducted a study on languages that are spoken in the US. For this, it used data from the American Community Survey and compared the number of people who said they spoke a language other than English at home in 2010 and 2017.

The rise of Telugu speakers in the US can be understood from the fact that last year, there were more than 4,00,000 Telugu speakers in the US. This was nearly double the number in 2010, IANS said.

What is also interesting for India is that out of the top 10 fastest-growing languages in America, seven are from South Asia.

Prasad Kunisetty, founder of the Telugu People Foundation, a non-profit organisation in the US, said, "The rise of Telugu was connected to the links forged between Hyderabad and the US engineering and technology industries."

"The rapid growth of IT in the mid-1990s led to a huge demand for software engineers. Many were recruited from Hyderabad, which sends students to the US in large numbers," he said, according to IANS.

Notable US-based Telugu speakers include the first Indian-American Miss America Nina Davuluri and current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Telugu is the fourth most spoken South Asian language in the US after Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati.

(With inputs from IANS)