ABSTRACT
Most people are likely to think of issues of language in terms of languages. There is much to be brought to attention simply as to the actual heterogeneity of the United States in this regard. Many may think of Montana as a state of big sky and few people, but Beltramo (1981) has identified some 37 or so languages in varying degrees of use among its population: Cree, Chippewa, Atsina, Blackfoot, Crow, Teton, Assiniboine Flathead, Kalispel, Kutenai, of American Indian languages; the French-Indian Creole, Metis; French, English, Gaelic, German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Polish, Czech (and Slovak), Serbo-Croatian, possibly Russian, Hungarian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Hebrew, and Yiddish, of languages from Europe; Arabic; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Miao (spoken by the recent immigrant Hmong), Vietnamese, and Lao (used as a lingua communis by Vietnamese with some other Asians).
