If you followed the 2016 US presidential election run-in, you wouldn’t have missed Donald Trump’s proclamation “Ab ki baar Trump sarkar” (Trump government this time), in one of his campaign ads. By all measures, he didn’t get his intonation or pronunciation right but the message to a vast majority of his target audience was loud and clear. A significant number of his voter base speaks Hindi after all.

Hindi was the second-fastest growing language in the United States between 2010 and 2017, according to the America Community Survey. The growth of the language, spoken predominantly in north India, was however, topped by another Indian language — Telugu.

Telugu, the Dravidian vernacular of the Telugu people spoken mostly in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and the Puducherry, emerged as the fastest-growing language in the United States between 2010 and 2017, nearly doubling the number of speakers with an 86 percent growth.

Hindi was joint second with Arabic.

Fourth on the list was Urdu, another language of north Indian origin. Urdu, which recorded a 30 percent rise in speakers in the US, is spoken mostly in India and Pakistan.

Urdu was followed by Chinese and Gujarati. Both the languages registered a 23 percent increase.

As Trump embarks on his two-day India trip later this week and with the 2020 presidential elections just a few months away, the expectations of an “Ab ki baar Trump sarkar” encore wouldn’t be amiss. And with him set to address “millions” in Ahmedabad, perhaps Trump could try his hands at a bit of Gujarati as well.

First Published:Feb 19, 2020 2:00 PM IST