| Languages of the United States |
| Official language(s) |
none |
| Main language(s) |
American English (82%) |
| Indigenous language(s) |
Hawaiian, Navajo, Dakota, Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Cherokee, Western Apache, Piman, Choctaw, Keres, Zuni, Ojibwe |
| Minority language(s) |
Spanish 10.7%, Chinese, French Cajun French, Louisiana Creole, Haitian creole, German Pennsylvania German, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Italian, Korean, Russian, Polish, Portuguese |
| Main foreign language(s) |
Spanish, French, German[1] |
| Common keyboard layout(s) |
QWERTY
|
The United States does not have an official language;[2] however, the majority of the population speaks English as a native language (about 82%.) The variety of English spoken in the United States is known as American English; together with Canadian English it makes up the group of dialects known as North American English. 96% of the population of the U.S. speaks English "well" or "very well".[3] There have been several proposals to make English the national language in amendments to immigration reform bills.[4][5] None of these bills have become law with the amendment intact.
The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country. In Puerto Rico, both Spanish and English have the status of official language, and in New Mexico laws are published in both languages. Throughout the Southwestern United States, long-established Spanish-speaking communities coexist with large numbers of more recent Spanish-speaking immigrants. The United States holds the world's fifth largest Spanish-speaking population, outnumbered only by Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is predominantly Spanish-speaking. Although many new Latin American immigrants are less than fluent in English, second-generation Hispanic Americans commonly speak English fluently, while only about half still speak Spanish.[citation needed]
According to the 2000 US census, people of German ancestry make up the largest single ethnic group in the United States, and the German language ranks fifth. Italian, Polish, and Greek are still widely spoken among populations descending from immigrants from those countries in the early 20th century, but the use of these languages is dwindling as older generations pass away. Starting in the 1970s and continuing until the mid 1990s, many people from the Soviet Union and later its constituent republics such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan have immigrated to the United States, causing Russian to become one of the minority languages in the United States.
Tagalog and Vietnamese have over one million speakers in the United States, almost entirely within recent immigrant populations. Both languages, along with Chinese languages, Japanese, and Korean, are now used in elections in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington.[6]
There is also a small population of Native Americans who still speak their native languages, but these populations are decreasing, and the languages are almost never widely used outside of reservations. Hawaiian, although having few native speakers, is still used at the state level in Hawaii along with the English language. Likewise, Louisiana declared French an official language alongside English in 1974. Besides English, Spanish, French, German, Navajo and other Native American languages, all other languages are usually learned from immigrant ancestors that came after the time of independence or learned through some form of education.
Approximately 337 languages are spoken or signed by the population, of which 176 are indigenous to the area. 52 languages formerly spoken in the country's territory are now extinct.[7]
Census statistics
According to the 2000 census,[9] the main languages by number of speakers older than 5 are:
- English - 215 million
- Spanish - 28 million
- Chinese languages - 2.0 million + (mostly Cantonese speakers, with a growing group of Mandarin speakers)
- French - 1.6 million
- German - 1.4 million (High German) + German dialects like Hutterite German, Texas German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Plautdietsch
- Tagalog - 1.2 million + (Most Filipinos may also know other Philippine languages, e.g. Ilokano, Pangasinan, Bikol languages, and Visayan languages)
- Vietnamese - 1.01 million
- Italian - 1.01 million
- Korean - 890,000
- Russian - 710,000
- Polish - 670,000
- Arabic - 610,000
- Portuguese - 560,000
- Japanese - 480,000
- French Creole - 450,000 (mostly Louisiana Creole French - 334,500)
- Greek - 370,000
- Hindi - 320,000
- Persian - 310,000
- Urdu - 260,000
- Gujarati - 240,000
- Armenian - 200,000
Official language status
The United States does not have a national official language; nevertheless, English (specifically, American English) is the primary language used for legislation, regulations, executive orders, treaties, federal court rulings, and all other official pronouncements, although there are laws requiring documents such as ballots to be printed in multiple languages when there is a large number of non-English speakers in an area. Some federal legislation implicitly standardizes English.[10]
Official language status of states and territories.
| English is official language |
Two or more official languages |
No official language; English is de-facto language |
No official language; multiple de-facto languages |
According to the official English advocacy group ProEnglish, 30 states have adopted English as an official language:[11]
States with official English
- a ProEnglish includes Louisiana in this list even though Louisiana has no de Jure official language, asserting that in 1807 the state adopted English as a condition to admittance to the union.
States without official English
- * Official English Legislation has been introduced in the current legislative session.
California has agreed to allow the publication of state documents in other languages to represent minority groups and immigrant communities. Languages such as Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Persian, Russian, Vietnamese, and Thai appear in official state documents, and the Department of Motor Vehicles publishes in 47 languages.
Several states and territories are officially or de facto bi- or trilingual:
The state of New York had state government documents (i.e., vital records) co-written in the Dutch language until the 1920s, in order to preserve the legacy of New Netherlands, though England annexed the colony in 1664.[23]
Native American languages are official or co-official on many of the U.S. Indian reservations and pueblos. In Oklahoma before statehood in 1907, territory officials debated whether or not to have Cherokee, Choctaw and Muscogee languages as co-official, but the idea never gained ground.
In New Mexico, although the state constitution does not specify an official language, laws are published in English and Spanish, and government material and services are legally required (by Act) to be made accessible to speakers of both languages.
Some have asserted that the New Mexico situation is part of the provisions in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; however, no mention of "language rights" is made in the Treaty or in the Protocol of Querétaro, beyond the "Mexican inhabitants" having (1) no reduction of rights below those of citizens of the United States and (2) precisely the same rights as are mentioned in Article III of the Treaty of the Louisiana Purchase and in the Treaty of the Florida Purchase. This would imply that the legal status of the Spanish language in New Mexico and in non-Gadsden Purchase areas of Arizona is the same as of French in Louisiana and certainly not less than that of German in Pennsylvania.
The issue of bilingualism also applies in the states of Arizona and Texas, while the constitution of Texas has no official language policy. Arizona passed a proposition in the November 7, 2006 general election declaring English as the official language.[24] But historical bilingual representation existed in the Southwest states.
In 2000, the census bureau printed the standard census questionnaires in six languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (in traditional characters), Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
On May 19, 2006, the United States Senate voted to make English the national language of the United States. According to the bill, written by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the federal government would no longer provide multilingual communications and services, except for those already guaranteed by law. Shortly after the approval of the Inhofe amendment, the Senate voted for another bill by Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), according to which English is the "common unifying language of the United States", but mandated that nothing in that declaration "shall diminish or expand any existing rights" regarding multilingual services. Neither of the bills were signed into law.
The English-only movement seeks to establish English as the only official language of the entire nation.
Indigenous languages
Native American languages
The Native American languages predate European settlement of the New World. In a few parts of the U.S. (mostly on Indian reservations), they continue to be spoken fluently. Most of these languages are endangered, although there are efforts to revive them. Normally the fewer the speakers of a language the greater the degree of endangerment, but there are many small Native American language communities in the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) which continue to thrive despite their small size.
The U.S. (and North America in general) is one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world, as Edward Sapir observes:
"Few people realize that within the confines of the United States there is spoken today a far greater variety of languages ... than in the whole of Europe. We may go further. We may say, quite literally and safely, that in the state of California alone there are greater and more numerous linguistic extremes than can be illustrated in all the length and breadth of Europe."
According to the 2000 Census and other language surveys, the largest Native American language-speaking community by far is the Navajo. The largest communities are:
Navajo
178,000 speakers. Navajo is one of the Athabascan languages of the Na-Dené family. Along with the closely related Apache, the Navajo were first.
Dakota
Dakota has 18,000 speakers (22,000 including speakers in Canada), not counting 6,000 speakers of the closely related Lakota. Dakota is a member of the Siouan language family.
Central Alaskan Yup'ik
Central Alaskan Yup'ik has 16,000 speakers. The Yup'ik are part of the Eskimo-Aleut language family but are not Inuit.
Cherokee
Cherokee, which has 16,000 speakers, belongs to the Iroquoian language family. The Cherokee have the largest tribal affiliation in the U.S., but most are of mixed ancestry and do not speak the language. Recent efforts to preserve and increase the Cherokee language in Oklahoma and the Cherokee Indian reservation in North Carolina have been productive.
Western Apache
Western Apache, with 12,500 speakers, is a Southern Athabaskan language closely related to Navajo, but not mutually intelligible with it.
Piman
Piman dialects (Pima and Tohono O'odham) have more than 12,000 speakers. Piman is one of the Uto-Aztecan languages along with Hopi, Comanche, Huichol, and Aztec.
Choctaw
Choctaw has 11,000 speakers. One of the Muskogean language family, like Seminole and Alabama.
Keres
Keres has 11,000 speakers. A language isolate, the Keres are the largest of the Pueblo nations. The Keres pueblo of Acoma is the oldest continually inhabited community in the United States.
Zuni
Zuni has 10,000 speakers. Zuni is a language isolate mostly spoken in a single pueblo, Zuni, the largest in the U.S.
Ojibwe
Ojibwe has 7,000 speakers (about 55,000 including speakers in Canada). The Algonquian language family includes populous languages like Cree in Canada.
Other languages
Many other languages have been spoken within the current borders of the United States. The following is a list of 28 language families (groups of demonstrably related languages) indigenous to the territory of the continental United States. With further study, some of these will probably turn out to be related to each other. For example, a relationship between Alsea, Coos, Siuslaw, and Wintu looks promising.[citation needed]
In addition to the above list of families, there are many languages in the United States that are sufficiently well-known to attempt to classify but which have not been shown to be related to any other language in the world. These 25 language isolates are listed below. With further study, some of these will likely prove to be related to each other or to one of the established families. Yuki-Wappo, for example, looks promising, and Natchez is frequently classified with the Muskogean family. Others, such as Cayuse and Adai, are so poorly known that it will probably never be possible to classify them properly. There are also larger and more contentious proposals such as Penutian and Hokan.
Since the languages in the Americas have a history stretching for about 17,000 to 12,000 years, current knowledge of American languages is limited. There are doubtless a number of languages that were spoken in the United States that are missing from historical record.
Native American sign languages
A sign-language trade pidgin, known as Plains Indian Sign Language or Plains Standard, arose among the Plains Indians. Each signing nation had a separate signed version of their spoken language, that was used by the hearing, and these were not mutually intelligible. Plains Standard was used to communicate between these nations. It seems to have started in Texas and then spread north, through the Great Plains, as far as British Columbia. There are still a few users today, especially among the Crow, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Unlike other sign languages developed by hearing people, it shares the spatial grammar of deaf sign languages.
Austronesian languages
Hawaiian
Hawaiian is an official state language of Hawaii as prescribed in the Constitution of Hawaii. Hawaiian has 1,000 native speakers. Formerly considered critically endangered, Hawaiian is showing signs of language renaissance. The recent trend is based on new Hawaiian language immersion programs of the Hawaii State Department of Education and the University of Hawaii, as well as efforts by the Hawaii State Legislature and county governments to preserve Hawaiian place names. In 1993, about 8,000 could speak and understand it; today estimates range up to 27,000. Hawaiian is related to the M-ori language spoken by around 150,000 New Zealanders and Cook Islanders as well as the Tahitian language which is spoken by another 120,000 people of Tahiti.
Samoan
Samoan is an official territorial language of American Samoa. Samoans make up 90% of the population, and most people are bilingual.
Chamorro
Chamorro is co-official in the Mariana Islands, both in the territory of Guam and in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In Guam, the Chamorro people make up about 60% of the population.
Carolinian
Carolinian is also co-official in the Northern Marianas, where only 14% of people speak English at home.
Immigrant languages
Some of the first European languages to be spoken in the U.S. are English, Dutch, German, French, and Spanish.
From the mid-19th century on, the nation had large numbers of immigrants who spoke little or no English, and throughout the country state laws, constitutions, and legislative proceedings appeared in the languages of politically important immigrant groups. There have been bilingual schools and local newspapers in such languages as German, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Greek, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Czech, Japanese, Yiddish, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Welsh, Cantonese, Bulgarian, Dutch,Portuguese and others, despite opposing English-only laws that, for example, illegalized church services, telephone conversations, and even conversations in the street or on railway platforms in any language other than English, until the first of these laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1923 (Meyer v. Nebraska).
Currently, Asian languages account for the majority of languages spoken in immigrant communities: Korean, various Chinese languages, and various Indian or South Asian languages like Hindi/Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Arabic, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Persian, and others. Typically, immigrant languages tend to be lost through assimilation within two or three generations, though there are some groups such as the Cajuns (French), Pennsylvania Dutch (German) in a state where large numbers of people were heard to speak it before the 1950s, and the original settlers of the Southwest (Spanish) who have maintained their languages for centuries.
English
-
English was inherited from British colonization, and it is spoken by the vast majority of the population. It serves as the de facto official language: the language in which government business is carried out. According to the 1990 census, 97% of U.S. residents speak English "well" or "very well." Only 0.8% speak no English at all as compared with 3.6% in 1890. American English is different from British English in terms of spelling (a classic example being the dropped "u" in words such as color/colour), grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and slang usage. The differences are not usually a barrier to effective communication between an American English and a British English speaker, but there are certainly enough differences to cause occasional misunderstandings, usually surrounding slang or region dialect differences.
English language distribution in the United States.
Some states, like California, have amended their constitutions to make English the only official language, but in practice, this only means that official government documents must at least be in English, and does not mean that they should be exclusively available only in English. For example, the standard California Class C driver's license examination is available in 32 different languages.
Spanish
Spanish language distribution in the United States.
-
Spanish is taught in various regions as a second language, especially in areas with large Hispanic populations such as the Southwestern United States along the border with Mexico, as well as Florida, the District of Columbia, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. In Hispanic communities across the country, bilingual signs in both Spanish and English may be quite common. Furthermore, numerous neighborhoods exist (such as Washington Heights in New York City or Little Havana in Miami) in which entire city blocks will have only Spanish language signs and Spanish-speaking people.
In addition to Spanish-speaking Hispanic populations, younger generations of non-Hispanics in the United States seem to be learning Spanish in larger numbers due to the growing Hispanic population and increasing popularity of Latin American movies and music performed in the Spanish language. Over 30 million Americans, roughly 12% of the population, speak Spanish as a first or second language, making Spanish easily the country's second-most spoken language; the United States thus has the fifth-largest Spanish speaking population in the world after Mexico, Spain, Colombia, and Argentina.[25]
Spanglish is a code switching variant of Spanish and English and is spoken in areas with large bilingual populations of Spanish and English speakers, such as along the U.S. - Mexico border (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), Florida, and New York City.
Chinese
Chinese, mostly of the Cantonese variety, is the third most-spoken language in the United States, almost completely spoken within Chinese American populations and by immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, especially in California.[26] Many young Americans not of Chinese descent have become interested in learning the language, specifically Standard Mandarin, the official spoken language in the People's Republic of China. Over 2 million Americans speak some variety of Chinese, with the Mandarin variety becoming increasingly more prevalent due to the opening up of the PRC.[26]
In New York City at least, although Mandarin is spoken as a native language among only 10% of Chinese speakers, it is used as a secondary dialect among the greatest number of them and is on its way to replace Cantonese as their lingua franca.[27]
French
French language distribution in the United States. Counties and parishes marked in yellow are those where 6% to 12% of the population speak French at home; brown, 12% to 18%; red, over 18%. Cajun French and French-based creole languages are not included.
-
French, the fourth most-common language, is spoken mainly by the native French, Cajun Haitian or French-Canadian populations. It is widely spoken in Maine, New Hampshire, and in Louisiana.
French is the second de facto official language in the state of Louisiana (where the French dialect of Cajun predominates). The largest French-speaking communities in the United States reside in Northeast Maine; Hollywood and Miami, Florida; New York City; certain areas of rural Louisiana; and small minorities in Vermont and New Hampshire. Many of the New England communities are connected to the dialect found across the border in Quebec. More than 13 million Americans possess primary French heritage, but only 1.6 million speak that language.
German
-
German was a widely spoken language in some of the colonies, especially Pennsylvania, where a number of German-speaking religious minorities settled to escape persecution in Europe. Dutch, Swedish, and Scottish Gaelic all became less common than German after the American Revolution. Another wave of settlement occurred when Germans fleeing the failure of 19th Century German revolutions emigrated to the United States. Large numbers of Germans settled throughout the U.S., especially in the cities. Neighborhoods in many cities were German-speaking. German farmers took up farming around the country, including the Texas Hill Country, at this time. German was widely spoken until the United States entered World War I. Numerous local German language newspapers and periodicals existed.
German language distribution in the United States.
In the early twentieth century, German was the most widely studied foreign language in the United States, and prior to World War I, more than 6%[citation needed] of American school-children received their primary education exclusively in German, though some of these Germans came from areas outside of Germany proper. Currently, more than 47 million Americans claim German ancestry, the largest self-described ethnic group in the U.S., but less than 4% of them speak a language other than English according to the 2005 American Community Survey [28]. The Amish speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch. In addition to Pennsylvania, German was widely spoken in the Midwest until the late 1950s. One reason for this decline of German language was the perception during both World Wars that speaking the language of the enemy was unpatriotic; foreign language instruction was banned in places during the First World War. Another was the demise of traditional agriculture[citation needed]. The last wave of German immigration followed World War II, as post-war Germany suffered economic problems, and ethnic Germans were uprooted from their homes in Eastern Europe. Unlike earlier waves, they were more concentrated in cities, and integrated quickly. Since the Wirtschaftswunder, German immigration to the U.S. has all but ended. Most German Americans are completely integrated into the mainstream American society and the language is being taught less and less in schools because of diminishing demand. However, in recent years, immigration of highly skilled Germans to the US has picked up to some degree.
See also: Hutterite German, Texas German, Pennsylvania Dutchified English, Plautdietsch.
There is a myth (known as the Muhlenberg Vote) that German was to be the official language of the U.S., but this is inaccurate and based on a failed early attempt to have government documents translated into German.[29] The myth also extends to German being the second official language of Pennsylvania; however, Pennsylvania does not have an official language.
Tagalog
Tagalog language distribution in the United States.
Tagalog speakers were already present in the United States as early as the late sixteenth century as sailors contracted by the Spanish colonial government. In the eighteenth century, they established settlements in Louisiana, such as Saint Malo.
After the American annexation of the Philippines, the number of Tagalog speakers steadily increased, as Filipinos began to migrate as students or contract laborers. Their numbers, however, decreased upon Philippine independence, as many Filipinos were repatriated.
Today, Tagalog, together with its standardized form Filipino, is spoken by over a million Filipino Americans, and is promoted by Filipino American civic organizations and Philippine consulates.
Taglish, a form of code-switching between Tagalog and English, is also spoken by a number of Filipino Americans.
As the Filipinos became the second fastest growing Asian population in the United States, Tagalog easily became the second most spoken Asian language in the continent. Today, Tagalog is being majored in some universities where a significant number of Filipinos exist. Some of these schools include the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the University of California.
As Tagalog is the basis of Filipino, most of all the Filipinos living in the United States are proficient in Tagalog.
Ilocano
Like the Tagalogs, the Ilocanos are an Austronesian stock which came from the Philippines. They were the first Filipinos to migrate en masse to the United States. They first entered the State of Hawai'i and worked there in the vast plantations.
As they did in the Philippine provinces of Northern Luzon and Mindanao, they quickly gained importance in the areas where they settled. Thus, the state of Hawai'i became no less different from the Philippines in terms of percentage of Ilocano speakers.
Like Tagalog, Ilocano is also being taught in universities where most of the Filipinos reside.
Italian
Current distribution of the Italian language in the United States.
-
The Italian language and its various dialects has been widely spoken in the United States for more than one hundred years, primarily due to large-scale immigration from the late 19th century to the mid 20th C. Today, it is the eighth most known language in the country, spoken by just over one million people.[30] In addition to Standard Italian learned by most people today, there has been a strong representation of the dialects and languages of Southern Italy amongst the immigrant population (Sicilian and Neapolitan in particular).
Russian
Russian language distribution in the United States.
The Russian language is frequently spoken in areas of Alaska, Los Angeles, |
