I like The Rhino Times, but I’ll confess that this quote from a recent article gave me pause:
“There are about 97 different languages being spoken in North Carolina according to estimates from the state.”
Apparently the Guilford County Sheriff’s department is okay with English and Spanish, but after that doesn’t have much in the line of resources. A grant is going to let the department experiment with handheld translators that will broadcast phrases officers need to speak — but the translators only cover 40 languages. Are we still 57 languages short?
“Sharon Harrison-Pope, grants manager for the Sheriff’s Department, said about 36,000 Guilford County residents – roughly 8 percent of the population – speak a language other than English as their primary language.”
Spanish, right? Not necessarily…
“… some of the more popular recent additions to the county’s language menagerie were Vietnamese, Laotian, Korean and Farsi.”
