Re:Six Months into Tariffs, Businesses Have No Idea How to P...
by the_gastropod on Thursday September 04, 2025 @12:16AM
(#45123528)
The market for reading the NYTimes in Spanish… There’s also a big enough market for reading it in Chinese! (https://cn.nytimes.com)
Since these are online-only versions of the NYTimes, and immigration sources change throughout history, no. This particular market did not exist 100 years ago.
However, the portion of non-English speakers has remained about the same since the 1910 census began asking about this. ~100 years ago, German was the most prominent non-English language spoken in the U.S., and there were over 500 German-language newspapers in circulation. Yiddish newspapers were common in New York. And Spanish newspapers were widely read in Texas. In Chicago, Polish newspapers were common. San Francisco had the Chinese World (世界日報) newspaper.
Your idea that, 100 years ago, everyone spoke English, and we didn’t support non-English speaking is just flatly wrong.
Since these are online-only versions of the NYTimes, and immigration sources change throughout history, no. This particular market did not exist 100 years ago.
However, the portion of non-English speakers has remained about the same since the 1910 census began asking about this. ~100 years ago, German was the most prominent non-English language spoken in the U.S., and there were over 500 German-language newspapers in circulation. Yiddish newspapers were common in New York. And Spanish newspapers were widely read in Texas. In Chicago, Polish newspapers were common. San Francisco had the Chinese World (世界日報) newspaper.
Your idea that, 100 years ago, everyone spoke English, and we didn’t support non-English speaking is just flatly wrong.