Languages Spoken in the U.S.

Does the U.S. have an official language?
You might be surprised that for more than 200 years, Americans have gotten by without declaring English their official language. English Only legislation first appeared in 1981 as a constitutional English Language Amendment but the measure never came to Congressional vote. Since 1981, 22 states have adopted various forms of Official English legislation, in addition to four that had already done so. Subtracting Hawai'i (which is officially bilingual with English and Hawaiian being the official languages) ) and Alaska (whose English-only initiative has been declared unconstitutional) leaves a total of 24 states with active Official English laws.

How many languages are spoken in the U.S.?
Far from being monolingual, the U.S. is a highly multilingual country. The number of languages spoken in the United States is 311. Of these, 162 are indigenous, and 149 are immigrant languages. An indigenous or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples.

According to the Census Bureau, in 14 million U.S. households people speak a language other than English. One in five people over age 5 speaks a language other than English. The large number of foreign language speakers in the United States is a consequence of recent immigration.

The figure below shows the languages spoken in US homes.

2000 Census Home Languages

Click here to see the list of languages spoken in the U.S., as identified in the 2000 census.

MLA Language Map and Data Center
Want to know how many people speak Arabic, Urdu or Pashto in your neighborhood? You can search by language and by state to find out where these and many other languages are spoken.

MLA Language Map uses data from the 2000 US census to display the locations and numbers of speakers of thirty languages and three groups of less commonly spoken languages in the U.S. The census data are based on responses to the question, "Does this person speak a language other than English at home?" The map illustrates the concentration of language speakers in zip codes and counties.
The Data Center provides actual numbers and percentages of speakers and includes census data about additional languages less commonly spoken in the U.S.

English

Español

Français

Deutsch

Italiano

Русский

Most spoken languages in the U.S.
The list below is based on the 2000 US census. It shows 20 most populous languages spoken in the U.S. No indigenous language made the top 20 list. As of January 2007, the US population was 301,029,225, so the figures above will need to be adjusted upwards.

Click on the name of the language to find out more about it on this website.

English	215,423,555	82.10%
Spanish	28,100,725	10.71%
French	1,606,790	0.61%
Mandarin	1,499,635	0.57%
German	1,382. 610	0.52%
Tagalog	1,224,245	0.46%
Vietnamese	1,009,625	0.38%
Italian	1,008,370	0.38%
Korean	894,065	0.34%
Russian	706,240	0.26%
Polish	667,415	0.25%
Arabic	614,580	0.23%
Portuguese	563,830	0.21%
Japanese	478,000	0.18%
French Creole	453,365	0.17%
Greek	365,440	0.13%
Hindi	317,055	0.12%
Persian	312,080	0.11%
Urdu	262,895	0.10%
Cantonese	259,745	0.9%

Chinese American Boy

Hawaii Girl

girl

Heritage speakers
The term "heritage speaker" refers to a person who comes from a home where a language other than English is spoken, who speaks or understands the home language, and who is more or less bilingual in English and the home language.

Immigration has made America more linguistically diverse than it has ever been. Data from the 2000 US census shows, for instance, that over 26% of Californians were born outside of the U.S., and that more than one language is spoken in 40% of California households. Nationwide, one in five children enters school speaking a language other than English.

Unfortunately, these children lose most of their native language in the process of learning English. Heritage languages typically die out within three generations. American schools generally ignore or even suppress the languages immigrant children bring with them. Giving up one's native language often is seen as a natural result of assimilation.

By adolescence, most immigrant children speak their heritage language haltingly. Most of them lose or never develop the ability to read and write in it or to speak it formally. Nevertheless, they have a head start on individuals who have to learn the language 'from scratch'. This is particularly true of less commonly taught and strategically important languages that are never taught in schools and offered only at a small number of universities.

The Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages consists of individuals and organizations invested in language development for heritage language speakers in the U.S. The Alliance is committed to working together to foster the advancement of the heritage language resources of this country as part of a larger effort to educate citizens who can function professionally in English and other languages.

The Heritage Language Journal provides a forum for scholars to publish the results of their research and to advance knowledge about educating heritage speakers.

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