More than 1 in 5 people (22%) age 5 and older in the United States spoke a language other than English at home during the five-year period from 2017 to 2021, according to new data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The newly released table package — Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over: 2017–2021 — provides data on over 500 individual languages and language groups spoken across the country during this time. The information is based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). This is the third tabulation the Census Bureau has released of detailed languages in addition to the 42 languages and language groups published annually in the ACS. It updates the last detailed language table package released in 2015.
Other highlights:
- Among people who spoke a language other than English, approximately 61% spoke Spanish and 78% spoke an Indo-European language (including, among others, Spanish, German, French and Italian).
- Sixty-two percent of those who spoke a language other than English at home also spoke English “very well.”
- In Maine and Vermont, French was the most common language other than English.
- In Hawaii, Iloko, a Philippine language, was the most common language other than English, followed by Tagalog and Japanese.
- Native North American language use (including Navajo, Central Yupik, and Western Apache, etc.) declined by 6% in the past eight years — from 364,331 speakers during 2009-2013 to 342,311 from 2017-2021.
- In nine states, a Native North American language mostly spoken by American Indians was in the top 15 languages other than English spoken at home by the population age 5 and older.
Data in this table package are subject to sampling and nonsampling error. Comparisons of estimates take sampling error into account and are significant at the 90% confidence level, unless otherwise noted. Because of rounding, some details may not sum to totals. For information on sampling and estimation methods, confidentiality protection and sampling and nonsampling errors, refer to Accuracy of the Data documents for 2021.
The top 15 languages other than English spoken at home are based on point estimates [PDF <1.0 MB] alone, and differences between ranks may not be significant at the 90 percent confidence level.