Three factors have been identified as affecting one's ability to maintain his/her minority mother-tongue in a metropolitan area: proportion the minority mother-tongue group forms of the total metropolitan population, its degree of residential segregation, and the absolute number of people in the minority mother-tongue group. Each factor is an indicator of a model of the urban ecology of minority language maintenance. Data on people of six minority mother-tongues in nine U.S. metropolitan areas are used. The absolute number of minority language people in a metropolitan area has a large positive effect on minority language maintenance. Residential segregation also has a positive effect.
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