Each Alaska native language has its own intricate beauty, a highly complex and regular grammar and enormous vocabulary. This has been developed by the people over the thousands of years they have lived in this area. Recently the history of these languages has been tragic. From about 1900 until the 1960s, native languages were severely suppressed. Children were punished for speaking their native language in school. They were forced to abandon their language, in order to speak English only. In 1972, the Alaska State Legislature passed the Bilingual Education bill, giving children the right to use and cultivate their native language in school, and also established the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The following table gives selected statistics from the 2000 census for language spoken at home by persons five years old and over.
| LANGUAGE |
NUMBER |
PERCENT |
| |
|
|
| Population 5 years and over |
579,740 |
100.0 |
| Speak only English |
496,982 |
85.7 |
| Speak a language other than English |
82,758 |
14.3 |
| Speak a language other than English |
82,758 |
14.3 |
| Other Native North American languages |
30,121 |
5.2 |
| Spanish or Spanish Creole |
16,674 |
2.9 |
| Tagalog |
8,934 |
1.5 |
| Korean |
4,369 |
0.8 |
| German |
3,574 |
0.6 |
| Russian |
2,952 |
0.5 |
| Other Pacific Island languages |
2,591 |
0.4 |
| French (incl. Patois, Cajun) |
2,197 |
0.4 |
| Japanese |
1,392 |
0.2 |
| Chinese |
1,295 |
0.2 |
