21. Languages in the United States of America

The United States does not have an official language, but English is spoken by about 82 per cent of the population as a native language. The variant of English spoken in the United States is known as American English.

The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country. Spanish is spoken by almost 13 per cent of the population in the USA in 2010. There are Spanish-speaking communities in the Southwestern United States. The second generation of Hispanic Americans speaks English fluently, and only about half still speak Spanish.

People of Germany make up the largest single ethnic group in the United States. German ranks fifth.

Italian, Polish, and Greek are spoken among immigrants from those countries in the early 20th century.

In the 1970s until the mid 1990s, many people from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan have immigrated to the United States, causing Russian to become one of the minority languages in the United States.

Tagalong and Vietnamese have over one million speakers in the United States.

There is also a small population of Native Americans, who still speak their native languages. Hawaiian is still used in Hawaii along with the English language.

22. Релігія у сучасній Британії (Religion in today’s Britain)

Everyone in Britain has the right to religious freedom. Britain is mainly Christian. There are 1.7 million members of the Anglican Church – the “Established Church”, the official church of the State. The Queen is the Head of it.

There are many other churches in Britain, for example: Roman Catholic, Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists and others.

In Scotland, there is Presbyterian Church. It has its own organization and appoints its own ministers.

In Northern Ireland, about half the people are Protestants and nearly 40% as Roman Catholics.

In Wales Methodist and Baptist are the two largest Christian Churches.

The Jewish community in Britain is the second largest group of Jews in Europe.

Britain has one of the largest Muslim communities in Western Europe.

There are the Sikh and the Hindu communities, too.

The Hindu community in Britain accounts for about 320,000 people.

Religious teaching is compulsory in all state schools in Britain. In Scotland religious lessons are not compulsory.

23. Stratification in the British society

In any society people are divided into different social groups (strata).

The following factors are important for a person to belong to a social status. They are:

• how much a person earns,

• what job one does,

• how a person speaks,

• how a person thinks,

• how well mannered a person is,

• what school a person or his children attend,

• where one lives.

Social differentiation in British society is the following:

1. Upper Class

Aristocracy and the top rich people in Britain, namely members of the royal family, dukes, earls, barons, the entrepreneurial rich belong to the upper class. They are a very small minority of the country’s population (not more than 1 per cent of it).