The Most Common Spoken Household Languages
We typically operate under the assumption that most Americans speak either English or Spanish. Though this is true in the broadest sense, the U.S. is a culturally diverse country, home to a plethora of languages.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) annually asks more than 1 million Americans questions about their lives, families, and backgrounds. One question asks respondents what language they mainly speak in their homes.
Migration Policy has used this data (while excluding English and Spanish) to leave us with the next-most-frequently spoken languages at home in each state.
Non-English Languages in the U.S.
In 2019, approximately 78% (241 million) of all 308.8 million people ages five and older reported speaking only English at home regardless of their nativity. The remaining 22% (67.8 million) reported speaking a language other than English at home.
Based on this data, Mandarin and Cantonese were the most common non-English, non-Spanish languages spoken in the U.S., with more than 3.4 million speakers across the country.
Here is a list of the most common languages spoken at home in the U.S., outside of English:
| Language | Population Estimate | Share of Foreign Language Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 41,757,000 | 61.6% |
| Cantonese and Mandarin | 3,495,000 | 5.2% |
| Tagalog and Filipino | 1,764,000 | 2.6% |
| Vietnamese | 1,571,000 | 2.3% |
| Arabic | 1,260,000 | 1.9% |
| French and Cajun | 1,172,000 | 1.7% |
| Korean | 1,075,000 | 1.6% |
| Russian | 941,000 | 1.4% |
| Haitian | 925,000 | 1.4% |
| German | 895,000 | 1.3% |
| Hindi | 893,000 | 1.3% |
| Portugese | 846,000 | 1.2% |
| Afro-Asiatic Languages | 590,000 | 0.9% |
| West African Languages | 589,000 | 0.9% |
| Indo-European (Read more...) |