Heritage Languages in the United States

Have you ever wondered how many different languages are spoken in the United States? A US Census Bureau report from 2019 found that there are over 180 languages that are are spoken in the United States. The same research found that 20% of the U.S. population or 67.8 million people speak a language other than English at home.

All states have heritage language speakers, but some states have larger percentages of their population that speak heritage languages. For example, In California 42% of the population speaks a language other than English at home. In Texas 32% of the population speak a language other than English at home while in New York 28% of the population are heritage language speakers and 25% identify as being heritage language speakers in Florida.

While there are 180 languages other than English spoken in the United States, some of these languages are spoken by more people than others. The languages other than English that are most spoken in the United states, in order of use include: Spanish, Chinese, German, French, Tagalog, Italian, Korean, Russian, and Polish.

Data sugget that the number of heritage language speakers is growing both in terms of the percentage of these speakers in the United States population and the absolute number of hertiage language speakers. In fact, the number of people speaking a language other than English at home has almost tripled since 1980. The increase is due in large part to immigration, but also could be due to growing efforts to protect heritage languages.

Photo Credit: Barth Bailey on Unsplah.

Information curated from Language Use in the United States, 2019 and the American Community Survey (ACS).