Although numbers are universal, getting everyone counted in the U.S. census will take more than one language.
And because census officials are aware of it, they hope that advertising in 27 languages and providing language assistance guides in 32 others will encourage everyone to participate.
"The challenge for the census is to count everyone living in the U.S.," said Michele Lowe, spokeswoman for the U.S. Census Bureau. "The inability to speak English is one of the barriers ... so having information available in one's native tongue helps increase participation and reduce the cost of census follow-up operations."
On census materials and advertisements, logos with the phrase "It's in our hands" are available in languages ranging from Spanish to Arabic, from Chinese to the Philippine language of Tagalog.
MULTILINGUAL LOGOSLanguages the logos available in:1. Arabic2. Armenian3. Bengali4. Chinese5. Farsi6. French7. German8. Greek9. Haitian Creole10. Hindi11. Hinglish12. Hmong13. Italian14. Japanese15. Khmer/Cambodian16. Korean17. Laotian18. Polish19. Portuguese20. Russian21. Spanish22. Tagalog23. Thai24. Ukrainian25. Urdu26. Vietnamese27. Yiddish
Natalia Sokil came to the United States from Ukraine when she was 13 years old and, though she is fluent in English, said she appreciates having the census information in Russian.
"It does help because if it's in your own language, it's more understandable," said Mrs. Sokil, owner of the European Market near Hamilton Place mall. "I've been here 20 years, but some words are confusing for me. ... English words have so many meanings sometimes, and you don't know if that's what they are saying or if it's something else."
Census workers put up a poster outside her store with information in the five languages, besides English, for which official forms and telephone assistance are available -- Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Russian and Spanish -- and gave her guides in other languages that can help people fill out their English census forms.
Jian Zuo, a China native who came to Chattanooga in 2004, learned English when he was in high school but acknowledged there may be many in the Chinese community who don't feel comfortable filling out the form in English.
"As I (have) witnessed, some of the first-generation immigrants in the Chinese community, though they tried hard, cannot speak fluent English due to age or other reasons," the 30-year-old said. "To reach out them, the best way is to provide the census in Chinese."
In 2000, the census had advertisements in 14 languages, which doubled in 2010. For the first time this year, census officials mailed bilingual forms in English and Spanish to targeted addresses based on previous data.