Languages in the United States

The United States federal             Primary Language at Home (2000)
government has no formally
established official language, English                               82.105%
but it does use English for    Spanish or Spanglish                  10.710%
legislation, regulations,      Chinese                               0.771%
executive orders, treaties,
federal court rulings, and all French (incl. Patois, Cajun)          0.627%
other official pronouncements. German                                0.527%
In some states, English,       Tagalog                               0.467%
French, Spanish or Hawaiian
are official. In 2000, the     Vietnamese                            0.385%
census bureau printed the      Italian                               0.384%
standard census questionnaires
in six languages: English,     Korean                                0.341%
Spanish, Korean, Chinese,      Russian                               0.269%
Vietnamese, and Tagalog. The   Polish                                0.254%
English-Only movement seeks to
establish English as the only  Arabic                                0.234%
official language of the       Portuguese or Portuguese Creole       0.215%
nation.                        Japanese                              0.182%
English was inherited from     French Creole                         0.173%
British colonization and it is Other Indic languages                 0.167%
spoken by the vast majority of
the population, although more  African languages                     0.160%
than 80 percent of Americans   Other Asian languages                 0.152%
have no British ancestors. It  Greek                                 0.139%
serves as the de facto
official language, for         Other Indo-European languages         0.125%
instance as that in which      Hindi                                 0.121%
government business is carried Other Pacific Island languages        0.120%
out. According to the 1990
census, 97 percent of U.S.     Persian                               0.119%
residents speak English ?well? Other Slavic languages                0.115%
or ?very well.? Only 0.8
percent speak no English at    Urdu                                  0.100%
all, as compared with 3.6      Other West Germanic languages         0.096%
percent in 1890. American      Gujarati                              0.090%
English has some differences
from British English. For      Serbo-Croatian                        0.089%
detailed differences in        Other Native North American languages 0.078%
British English and American   Armenian                              0.077%
English see American and
British English Differences.   Hebrew                                0.074%
                               Mon-Khmer, Cambodian                  0.069%
The second-most common
language in the country is     Yiddish                               0.068%
Spanish, spoken by about 28.1  Navajo                                0.068%
million people (or 10.7% of    Miao, Hmong                           0.064%
the population) in 2000. The
United States is the fifth     Scandinavian languages                0.062%
country in the world in        Laotian                               0.057%
Spanish-speaking population,   Other and unspecified languages       0.055%
outnumbered only by Mexico,
Spain, Argentina, and          Thai                                  0.046%
Colombia. Although many new    Hungarian                             0.045%
arrivals have various levels
of English-proficiency, Hispanics who are second-generation American in the
United States almost all speak English, but only about 50 percent still
speak Spanish. For a detailed history of Spanish in USA from 15th century
on, see Spanish in the United States. Spanglish is a pidgin of Spanish and
English and is spoken in areas with large semi-bilingual populations of
Spanish and English speakers, such as along the U.S. - Mexico border,
Florida, and New York City.

The USA has long been the destination of many immigrants. From the mid 19th
century on, the nation had large numbers of residents who spoke little or no
English, and throughout the country there have been towns and neighborhoods
of cities where business, schools, and newspapers were in languages such as
German, Italian, Czech, Polish, Chinese, Yiddish, etc. Currently, Asian
languages account for the majority of languages spoken in immigrant
communities: Korean, various Chinese languages, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
Historically, the original languages of immigrants tend to disappear or
become greatly reduced through assimilation and generational change.

Before World War I, more than 6 percent of American schoolchildren received
their primary education exclusively in German. Currently, although more than
45 million Americans claim German ancestors, only 1.5 million speak the
language. The Amish speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch.
There is a myth that German was to be the official language of the US, in
order to more clearly sever ties with Great Britain, but this is inaccurate.
It is based on a failed early attempt to have government documents
translated into German.

Cajun, a variant of French, is spoken in some parts of Louisiana (part of a
former French colony). There are French Canadian settlers in parts of
northern New England, as well. More than 13 million Americans claim French
ancestry, but only 1.5 million speak that language.

The various Native American languages, of course, predated the European
settlement of the New World, and in a few parts of the USA continue to be
spoken. Most of these languages, however, are moribund, despite efforts by
native peoples to revive them. Exceptions to this include Navajo, with over
100,000 native speakers, Lakota, Hopi and several others. Native languages
played an important role in World War I and World War II, when they were
spoken by native peoples as codes. In some cases, the languages were spoken
outright over the radio, while in other cases, such as Navajo, codes were
developed, using the language as a basis. With fewer than thirty people
outside the United States able to speak the language, the code remained
unbroken.

Hawaiian is an official language of the state of Hawaii, but has been
displaced by English and is a critically endangered language.

Some African-American activists insist that Ebonics, also known as
African-American Vernacular English, the dialect of English spoken in many
African-American sections of American urban areas, is not simply a dialect,
but an entirely different language, and are urging that their language be
accepted as an equal to American English.

Gullah, an English-African creole is spoken on the Sea Islands of South
Carolina and Georgia.

American Sign Language (ASL) is the language used by many deaf people in
America. Unlike Signed English, ASL is a natural language in its own right,
not a symbolic representation of English. The US Census Bureau did not
gather data on ASL when compiling the list of "primary language at home"
shown above, but estimates of the number of ASL users would place its
ranking anywhere from 3rd to 10th in the list.

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