An excerpt from Mental Floss -
The Most-Spoken Language Besides English and Spanish in Every State, Mapped
The analysis from WordFinderX took a deep dive into the languages of the United States—and revealed some fascinating trends along the way.
By Paul Anthony Jones
The United States is, famously, a linguistic melting pot, with estimates ranging from 350 to as many as 430 different languages being used across the country.
Out of all those, English understandably comes out on top nationwide. Almost four-fifths of Americans reported in the last census that they only speak English at home, making English America’s de facto official language (though, oddly, no de jure official language has ever been legally or formally recognized in the United States). After that, Spanish is America’s second most widely-spoken language, used in 62 percent of non-English speaking households, and giving America the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking population, after Mexico.
But what would happen if we were to take English and Spanish off the table, and look instead at how the other 400 or so languages of the United States are used? A fascinating new analysis has done precisely that.
Language blog WordFinderX took household population data from the last census to discover the most spoken languages—outside of English and Spanish—across the United States. Breaking down the Census Bureau data by regions, states, major cities, and even individual districts and neighborhoods showed just how linguistically diverse American households truly are, and revealed some surprising geographic and linguistic trends in the process.
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