This video premiered at the ATXplained Live show at the Paramount Theatre on Sept. 28, 2022.
After English, the second most widely spoken language in Austin is, unsurprisingly, Spanish. The third most spoken language is a bit more difficult to determine. The City of Austin says “other Indo-European languages” are the next most common.
But KUT listener Mary Milan wanted to know: What really is the third most spoken language in Austin? So, she reached out to KUT’s ATXplained project.
KUT multimedia producer Patricia Lim asked Austin’s city demographer Lila Valencia to explain the breakdown. After teasing out and counting individual languages, Chinese outnumbers every single language in the category of "other Indo-European languages."
In this video, listen to Jenny Tinghui Zhang, a Chinese-American and author of the novel Four Treasures of the Sky, and speech pathologist Phuong Lien Palafox share their experiences with the language.
