The most commonly used language in the United States is English (specifically the American English set of varieties), which is the national language and official language. While the U.S. Congress has never declared a statutory official language, the federal government primarily uses English and a 2025 executive order declared English official. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have laws that recognize English as an official language. Of these, three states and most territories have adopted English plus one or more other official languages. Overall, 430 languages are spoken or signed by the population, of which 177 are indigenous to the U.S. or its territories, and accommodations for non-English-language speakers are sometimes made under various federal, state, and local laws.

The majority of the U.S. population (77%) speaks only English at home as of 2024, according to the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau. The second most common language by far is Spanish, spoken by 14% of the population, followed by Chinese, spoken by around 1% of the population. Other languages spoken by over a million residents are Tagalog, Vietnamese, Arabic, French, Korean, Portuguese, Hindi, Haitian Creole, and Russian. Although some 22.3% of U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home, only 8.4% report that they speak English less than "very well".

Many residents of the U.S. unincorporated territories speak their own native languages or a local language, such as Spanish in Puerto Rico and English in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Over the course of U.S. history, many languages have been brought into what became the United States from Europe, Africa, Asia, other parts of the Americas, and Oceania. Some of these languages have developed into dialects and dialect families (examples include African-American English, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Gullah), creole languages (such as Louisiana Creole), and pidgin languages. American Sign Language (ASL) and Interlingua, an international auxiliary language, were created in the United States.

History Statistics Below are all languages that ranked among the top ten in the United States by total number of speakers at home in the 1910 census, 1940 census, 1970 census, 2000 census, and 2024 American Community Survey. Figures appear in bold for any language that also ranked among the top ten in a specific census or survey year. Data from 1910 and 1940 cover only the contiguous U.S. (48 states and the District of Columbia); figures for 1970, 2000 and 2024 include Alaska and Hawaii.

+ Languages in the United States (1910−2024)Language19101940197020002024 Arabic 46,727 107,420 193,112 614,582 1,484,439 Chinese 71,531 77,504 345,431 2,022,143 3,734,956 Czech 539,392 520,440 452,812 70,500 English 69,353,758 105,905,158 160,717,113 215,423,557 247,695,110 French 1,357,169 1,412,060 2,598,408 1,643,838 1,276,702 German 8,817,271 4,949,780 6,093,054 1,382,613 874,078 Hindi 26,253 317,057 1,059,933 Italian 2,151,422 3,766,820 4,144,315 1,008,370 507,347 Korean 462 1,711 53,528 894,063 1,150,701 Norwegian 1,009,854 658,220 612,862 55,465 Polish 1,707,640 2,416,320 2,437,938 667,414 508,512 Portuguese 141,268 215,860 365,300 564,630 1,099,503 Russian 95,137 585,080 334,615 706,242 1,021,165 Slovak 284,444 484,360 510,366 41,300 Spanish 448,198 1,861,400 7,823,583 28,101,052 44,867,699 Swedish 1,445,869 830,900 626,102 67,655 Tagalog 160 45,553 217,907 1,224,241 1,921,526 Vietnamese 1,009,627 1,599,409 Yiddish 1,676,762 1,751,100 1,593,993 178,945 Total responses 92,228,496 131,846,445 203,210,158 262,375,152 321,745,943

In 1910, the most spoken languages in New York State were English (5,178,081, or of the population), German (1,333,013, or ), Yiddish (912,692, or ), Italian (745,669, or ), and Polish (283,733, or ). In 2024, they were English (12,869,930, or of the population), Spanish (2,826,836, or ), Chinese (646,302, or ), Russian (209,622, or ), and Bengali (192,476, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in Massachusetts were English (2,382,545, or of the population), French (312,667, or ), Italian (132,473, or ), Yiddish (114,190, or ), and German (87,602, or ). In 2024, they were English (5,034,353, or of the population), Spanish (670,417, or ), Portuguese (247,638, or ), Chinese (153,698, or ), and Haitian Creole(86,961, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in Illinois were English (3,395,029, or of the population), German (981,956, or ), Polish (274,661, or ), Swedish (236,023, or ), and Czech (124,225, or ). In 2024, they were English (9,101,368, or of the population), Spanish (1,702,816, or ), Polish (157,649, or ), Chinese (117,166, or ), and Tagalog (84,264, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in Wisconsin were English (977,170, or of the population), German (758,647, or ), Norwegian (161,310, or ), Polish (128,915, or ), and Swedish (61,693, or ). In 2024, they were English (5,112,522, or of the population), Spanish (296,785, or ), Hmong (36,777, or ), German (26,203, or ), and Chinese (17,977, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in Minnesota were English (794,425, or of the population), German (403,117, or ), Norwegian (286,884, or ), Swedish (282,037, or ), and Polish (49,142, or ). In 2024, they were English (4,755,417, or of the population), Spanish (246,301, or ), Somali (110,296, or ), Hmong (73,033, or ), and Chinese (23,835, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in Washington State were English (779,667, or of the population), German (107,384, or ), Swedish (61,454, or ), Norwegian (54,597, or ), Italian (17,326, or ), French (17,300, or ), Danish (16,687, or ), Japanese (12,920, or ), and Finnish (11,808, or ). In 2024, they were English (5,858,792, or of the population), Spanish (685,031, or ), Chinese (160,131, or ), Vietnamese (73,907, or ), Tagalog (69,772, or ), Korean (58,590, or ), Russian (58,539, or ), and Hindi (45,281, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in Texas were English (3,136,343, or of the population), Spanish (234,179, or ), German (177,430, or ), and Czech (41,080, or ). In 2024, they were English (18,861,687, or of the population), Spanish (8,272,577, or ), Vietnamese (254,659, or ), Chinese (204,912, or ), Hindi (130,641, or ), Arabic (126,371, or ), and Telugu (126,090, or ).

In 1910, the most spoken languages in California were English (1,518,070, or of the population), German (249,680, or ), Italian (117,243, or ), Spanish (60,652, or ), Portuguese (58,716, or ), Swedish (51,630, or ), French (49,030, or ), Japanese (41,358, or ), Chinese (36,248, or ), and Danish (31,300, or ). In 2024, they were English (20,412,952, or of the population), Spanish (10,754,818, or ), Chinese (1,334,399, or ), Tagalog (820,806, or ), Vietnamese (559,609, or ), Korean (350,520, or ), Persian (263,138, or ), Hindi (253,073, or ), Arabic (223,882, or ), Armenian (222,071, or ), Russian (188,555, or ), Punjabi (186,435, or ), Japanese (132,602, or ), French (131,065, or ), and Portuguese (90,179, or ).

Indigenous languages

The history of language in the continental United States began tens of thousands of years ago with the settlement of the Americas by the Paleo-Indians. By 1492, there were roughly 5 million inhabitants of the contiguous U.S., organized into a myriad of tribes and speaking hundreds of different languages.Ostler, Jeffrey (2019). Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas. New Haven: Yale University Press. While the Maya, Aztecs, and other Mesoamerican cultures developed writing systems, Indigenous groups in the U.S. had not become literate at this time. They nonetheless utilized a variety of methods to record history, trade, and celestial cycles, such as carved pictographs by the Southwest tribes, images on buffalo hides by Plains Indians, and wampum belts by Eastern Woodlands tribes such as the Haudenosaunee, used to mark oral history, treaties, and other events.

Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492 led to the European exploration and colonization of the New World. Through introduction of disease, the population of indigenous peoples in the modern-day contiguous U.S. precipitously dropped from around 5 million in 1492 to around 600,000 in 1800, scattered from the Appalachians to the Pacific, while the area east of the Applachians had been largely cleared of indigenous peoples and was home to 4 million European-descended settlers and 1 million African-descended slaves, with the settlers and their slaves undergoing a level of unprecedented population growth., The dramatic population decline and geographic upheaval led to the erasure of numerous Indigenous cultures and consolidation of others. Ultimately this was a significant cause of language extinction.

Between 1800 and 1900, the population of the United States grew rapidly from 5 million to 76 million. The country vigorously expanded westward, continuously displacing native tribes and forcing them to consolidate into a smaller and smaller area, eventually corresponding to the modern state of Oklahoma, which by 1900 was home from tribes as diverse as the Modoc from California, the Sac from Michigan, the Delaware from Pennsylvania, the Seminole from Florida, and the Apache from New Mexico. Even Oklahoma was opened to settlement in the 20th century, leaving only a few scattered reservations throughout the country, by far the largest being the Navajo reservation located on undesired desert land. The closure of most of their lands to farming and grazing, compounded by the ecological destruction that those settlements caused, led the hunter-settler lifestyle of many tribes to become unsustainable, leading to starvation and reliance on the federal government's Indian agencies for food. Starvation, continued introduction of disease, and violence led the Indian population to shrink from 600,000 in 1800 to 250,000 in 1900, and significant language extinction happened during this century. The population of Alaska Natives similarly declined from 70,000 to 25,000 between 1870 and 1910.

After 1900, the U.S. government pursued the cultural assimilation of Native Americans, including the termination and downsizing of reservations, and the enrollment of reservation youth in American Indian boarding schools where they were separated from their families and cultures and forced to speak English, even punished for speaking their home languages.

The purposeful erasure of Indigenous languages in favor of English is considered linguistic imperialism and part of the cultural aspect of the Native American genocide in the United States.

Hawaii was annexed to the United States in 1898. The Native Hawaiian population fell from 683,000 in 1778 to 24,000 by 1920, and came to be outnumbered by White and Asian migrants. Demographic pressures and governmental assimilation policies led to near extinction of the Hawaiian language. Conversely, in American Samoa, annexed by the U.S. after 1899, the vast majority of the population is of Samoan ethnicity, and 87.9% of the population speaks Samoan at home, with only 3.3% of the population speaking English at home.General demographic characteristics , 2020 Decennial Census of the Island Areas, American Samoa demographic profile, U.S. Census Bureau.Selected social characteristics , 2020 Decennial Census of the Island Areas, American Samoa demographic profile, U.S. Census Bureau.