In his well-known study on “linguistic life expectancies” in southern California in 2006, Ruben Rumbaut, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, found that Spanish was following the same trajectory as other languages in America had-just more slowly. He established that only 5% of fourth-generation Mexican-Americans in southern California could speak Spanish very well: “After at least 50 years of continuous Mexican migration into southern California, Spanish appears to draw its last breath in the third generation.” [Subscription required.]