In 2025, there were around 1.53 billion people worldwide who spoke English either natively or as a second language, slightly more than the 1.18 billion Mandarin Chinese speakers at the time of survey. Hindi and Spanish accounted for the third and fourth most widespread languages that year. Languages in the United States The United States does not have an official language, but the country uses English, specifically American English, for legislation, regulation, and other official pronouncements. The United States is a land of immigration, and the languages spoken in the United States vary as a result of the multicultural population. The second most common language spoken in the United States is Spanish or Spanish Creole, which over than 43 million people spoke at home in 2023. There were also 3.5 million Chinese speakers (including both Mandarin and Cantonese),1.8 million Tagalog speakers, and 1.57 million Vietnamese speakers counted in the United States that year. Different languages at home The percentage of people in the United States speaking a language other than English at home varies from state to state. The state with the highest percentage of population speaking a language other than English is California. About 45 percent of its population was speaking a language other than English at home in 2023.

Top Languages Spoken in the United States

The Impact of linguistics on Community and Business in America

About this dataset

Languages are an important part of daily life in the USA. Here is a table that shows the most common languages spoken in the USA, as well as a big spreadsheet which shows each CBSA (Core-Based Statistical Area, or urban area).

Language usage varies widely throughout the United States. According to the latest census data, over 350 different languages are represented in homes across the country. The following table and spreadsheet provide more detailed information on language usage throughout the various states and cities in the US:

Columns: - index: Index column for dataframe - Table with column headers in row 5 and row headers in column A: Contains language data for each CBSA (Core Based Statistical Area) - Unnamed: 1: Rank of CBSA by total number of speakers of all languages - Unnamed: 2: Name of CBSA - Unnamed: 3: Population of CBSA - Unnamed: 4: Percent of population that speaks English very well - Unnamed: 5 through Unnamed: 58 : Languages spoken by at least 0.1% of the population, with corresponding percentages

How to use the dataset

1. This dataset can be used to understand the linguistic diversity of the United States, and to compare languages spoken across different states and cities.
2. This data can also be used to explore trends in language usage over time.
3. businesses can use this dataset to identify which languages are most commonly spoken in the areas in which they operate and tailor their marketing or customer service accordingly.
4. Schools could use this dataset to plan language-learning programs based on the needs of their community.
5. Policymakers could use this data to better understand linguistic diversity in the United States and design programs to support bilingualism or multilingualism

Research Ideas

1. Businesses can use this dataset to identify which languages are most commonly spoken in the areas in which they operate and cater their marketing or customer service accordingly.
2. Schools could use this data to plan language-learning programs based on the needs of their community.
3. Policymakers could use this dataset to better understand linguistic diversity in the United States and design programs to support bilingualism or multilingualism

Acknowledgements

This dataset was created by Gary Hoover. The data was sourced from https://www.kaggle.com/garyhoov/us-languages

License

Unknown License - Please check the dataset description for more information.

Columns

File: Languages Spoken at Home by Urban Area = CBSA.csv

File: US Languages Spoken at Home 2014.csv | Column name | Description | |:-------------------------------------------------------------------|:--------------| | Table with column headers in row 5 and row headers in column A | |

As of October 2025, English was the dominant language for online content, used by nearly half of all websites worldwide. Spanish ranked second, accounting for around 6 percent of web content, followed by German with 5.9 percent. English as the leading online language United States and India, the countries with the most internet users after China, are also the world's biggest English-speaking markets. The internet user base in both countries combined, as of January 2023, was over a billion individuals. This has led to most of the online information being created in English. Consequently, even those who are not native speakers may use it for convenience. Global internet usage by regions As of October 2024, the number of internet users worldwide was 5.52 billion. In the same period, Northern Europe and North America were leading in terms of internet penetration rates worldwide, with around 97 percent of its populations accessing the internet.

Context

After going through quite the verbal loop when ordering foreign currency through the bank, which involved a discussion with an assigned financial advisor at the branch the following day to confirm details, I noticed despite our names hinting at the assumed typical background similarities, communication by phone was much more difficult due to the thickness in accents and different speech patterns when voicing from a non-native speaker.

It hit me then coming from an extremely multicultural and welcoming city, the challenges others from completely different labels given to them in life must go through in their daily affairs when having to face communication barriers that I myself encountered, particularly when interacting with those outside their usual bubble. Now imagine this situation occurring every hour across the world in various sectors of business. How may this impede, help or create frustrations in minor or major ways as a result of increasing workplace diversity quota demands, customer satisfaction needs and process efficiencies?

The data I was looking for to explore this phenomena existed in the form of native and non-native speakers of the 100 most commonly spoken languages across the globe.

Content

The data in this database contains the following attributes:

• Language - name of the language
• Total Speakers - this assumes both native and non-native speakers
• Native Speakers - native speakers of the language
• Origin - family origin group of said language

Acknowledgements

The data was collected with the aid of WordTips visualization of the 22nd edition of Ethnologue - "a research center for language intelligence"

https://www.ethnologue.com/world https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200 https://word.tips/pictures/b684e98f-f512-4ac0-96a4-0efcf6decbc0_most-spoken-languages-world-5.png?auto=compress,format&rect=0,0,2001,7115&w=800&h=2845

Inspiration

As globalization no longer constrains us, what implications will this have in terms of organizational communications conducted moving forward? I believe this is something to be examined in careful context in order to make customer relationship processes meaningful rather than it being confined to a strictly detached transactional basis.

This dataset contains estimates of the number of residents aged 5 years or older in Chicago who “speak English less than very well,” by the non-English language spoken at home and community area of residence, for the years 2008 – 2012. See the full dataset description for more information at: https://data.cityofchicago.org/api/views/fpup-mc9v/files/dK6ZKRQZJ7XEugvUavf5MNrGNW11AjdWw0vkpj9EGjg?download=true&filename=P:\EPI\OEPHI\MATERIALS\REFERENCES\ECONOMIC_INDICATORS\Dataset_Description_Languages_2012_FOR_PORTAL_ONLY.pdf

Hindi, with over *** million native speakers was the most spoken language across Indian homes, followed by Bengali with ** million speakers, as of 2011 census data. English native speakers accounted for about *** thousand during the measured time period. The colonial rule in India One of the most remarkable and widespread legacies that the British colonial rule left behind was the English language. Before independence, the English language was the solely used for higher education and in government and administrative processes. Post-independence, however, and till today, Hindi was claimed as the language with official government patronage. This lead to resistance from the southern states of India, where Hindi did not have prominence. Consequently, the Official Languages Act of 1963, was enacted by the parliament, which ensured the continued use of English for official purposes in conjunction with Hindi. Multi-linguistic cultures India has approximately ** major languages that are written in about ** different scripts. While the country’s official languages are both, English and Hindi, Hindi remains the most preferred language used online especially in the northern rural areas. The use of English is becoming increasingly popular in the urban areas. In addition, almost every state in India has its own official language that is studied in primary and secondary school as an obligatory second language. Among the most prominent are Bengali, Marathi, and Telugu.

This statistic illustrates the various languages spoken at home in Australia 2016, by number of speakers. During the period examined, approximately 17 million people in Australia spoke English at home, while close to 600 thousand spoke Mandarin at home.

This dataset provides a comprehensive overview of 500 languages spoken around the world. It captures essential linguistic features, including language families, geographical regions, writing systems, and the estimated number of native speakers. This dataset aims to highlight the rich diversity of languages and their cultural significance, offering valuable insights for linguists, researchers, and enthusiasts interested in global language distribution.

The dataset contains real and accurate records for 500 languages across different regions and linguistic families. It covers a diverse range of languages, from widely spoken ones like English and Mandarin to less commonly known languages. The data was meticulously compiled to reflect the authentic linguistic landscape and provide a valuable resource for language studies and cultural analysis.

In 2024, some 45 million people in the United States spoke Spanish at home. In comparison, the second most spoken non-English language spoken by households was Chinese, at just 3.7 million speakers.The distribution of the U.S. population by ethnicity can be accessed here. A ranking of the most spoken languages across the world can be accessed here.

This data set uses the 2009-2013 American Community Survey to tabulate the number of speakers of languages spoken at home and the number of speakers of each language who speak English less than very well. These tabulations are available for the following geographies: nation; each of the 50 states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico; counties with 100,000 or more total population and 25,000 or more speakers of languages other than English and Spanish; core-based statistical areas (metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas) with 100,000 or more total population and 25,000 or more speakers of languages other than English and Spanish.

This layer shows Language Spoken at Home. This is shown by state and county boundaries. This service contains the 2018-2022 release of data from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year data, and contains estimates and margins of error. There are also additional calculated attributes related to this topic, which can be mapped or used within analysis. This layer is symbolized to show the percentage of households with Limited English Speaking Status. To see the full list of attributes available in this service, go to the "Data" tab, and choose "Fields" at the top right. Current Vintage: 2018-2022ACS Table(s): B16004, DP02, S1601, S1602Data downloaded from: CensusBureau's API for American Community Survey Date of API call: January 18, 2024National Figures: data.census.govThe United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS):About the SurveyGeography & ACSTechnical DocumentationNews & UpdatesThis ready-to-use layer can be used within ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, its configurable apps, dashboards, Story Maps, custom apps, and mobile apps. Data can also be exported for offline workflows. Please cite the Census and ACS when using this data.Data Note from the Census:Data are based on a sample and are subject to sampling variability. The degree of uncertainty for an estimate arising from sampling variability is represented through the use of a margin of error. The value shown here is the 90 percent margin of error. The margin of error can be interpreted as providing a 90 percent probability that the interval defined by the estimate minus the margin of error and the estimate plus the margin of error (the lower and upper confidence bounds) contains the true value. In addition to sampling variability, the ACS estimates are subject to nonsampling error (for a discussion of nonsampling variability, see Accuracy of the Data). The effect of nonsampling error is not represented in these tables.Data Processing Notes:Boundaries come from the Cartographic Boundaries via US Census TIGER geodatabases. Boundaries are updated at the same time as the data updates, and the boundary vintage appropriately matches the data vintage as specified by the Census. These are Census boundaries with water and/or coastlines clipped for cartographic purposes. For state and county boundaries, the water and coastlines are derived from the coastlines of the 500k TIGER Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles. The original AWATER and ALAND fields are still available as attributes within the data table (units are square meters). The States layer contains 52 records - all US states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The Counties (and equivalent) layer contains 3221 records - all counties and equivalent, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico municipios. See Areas Published. Percentages and derived counts, and associated margins of error, are calculated values (that can be identified by the "_calc_" stub in the field name), and abide by the specifications defined by the American Community Survey.Field alias names were created based on the Table Shells.Margin of error (MOE) values of -555555555 in the API (or "*****" (five asterisks) on data.census.gov) are displayed as 0 in this dataset. The estimates associated with these MOEs have been controlled to independent counts in the ACS weighting and have zero sampling error. So, the MOEs are effectively zeroes, and are treated as zeroes in MOE calculations. Other negative values on the API, such as -222222222, -666666666, -888888888, and -999999999, all represent estimates or MOEs that can't be calculated or can't be published, usually due to small sample sizes. All of these are rendered in this dataset as null (blank) values.

Presents socio-demographic information of York Region’s population and is aggregated from Statistics Canada’s Census data. For reference purposes, York Region data is compared to those of Ontario, Canada, the Greater Toronto Area and York Region local municipalities.

Data on mother tongue of married spouse or common-law partner by mother tongue of child, mother tongue of other married spouse or common-law partner, language spoken most often at home by married spouse or common-law partner, language spoken most often at home by child, language spoken most often at home by other married spouse or common-law partner and age of child for children under 18 years of age in couple families in private households.

In 2021, there were 611,845 people who spoke Polish as a main language in England and Wales, the most common non-English language among the population. This was followed by Romanian, and Panjabi, which had 471,945 speakers and 290,745 speakers respectively.

The 50 most common languages of 15-year-olds and older people of the permanent resident population in the city of Zurich. The evaluation is based on the pooled target person data set of the structural survey. Period: 2018 to 2020.

Data on languages spoken at home by mother tongue, immigrant status and period of immigration and first official language spoken for the population in private households in Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and parts.

This statistic ranks the ten most spoken languages, other than English and Welsh, in Welsh schools in 2020, by number of speakers. The most commonly spoken language was Polish with over 4.9 thousand speakers, Arabic at 3.4 thousand.

This is Statistics Canada collected census data for 2016. The data refers only to the population in private households. Residents of collective dwellings (dwellings of a commercial, institutional or communal nature) are excluded. Calgary geographic boundaries are from the municipal 2017 Census by Community.

This layer shows language group of language spoken at home by age. This is shown by tract, county, and state boundaries. This service is updated annually to contain the most currently released American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year data, and contains estimates and margins of error. There are also additional calculated attributes related to this topic, which can be mapped or used within analysis. This layer is symbolized to show the percentage of the population age 5+ who speak Spanish at home. To see the full list of attributes available in this service, go to the "Data" tab, and choose "Fields" at the top right. Current Vintage: 2019-2023ACS Table(s): B16007Data downloaded from: Census Bureau's API for American Community Survey Date of API call: December 12, 2024National Figures: data.census.govThe United States Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS):About the SurveyGeography & ACSTechnical DocumentationNews & UpdatesThis ready-to-use layer can be used within ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, its configurable apps, dashboards, Story Maps, custom apps, and mobile apps. Data can also be exported for offline workflows. For more information about ACS layers, visit the FAQ. Please cite the Census and ACS when using this data.Data Note from the Census:Data are based on a sample and are subject to sampling variability. The degree of uncertainty for an estimate arising from sampling variability is represented through the use of a margin of error. The value shown here is the 90 percent margin of error. The margin of error can be interpreted as providing a 90 percent probability that the interval defined by the estimate minus the margin of error and the estimate plus the margin of error (the lower and upper confidence bounds) contains the true value. In addition to sampling variability, the ACS estimates are subject to nonsampling error (for a discussion of nonsampling variability, see Accuracy of the Data). The effect of nonsampling error is not represented in these tables.Data Processing Notes:This layer is updated automatically when the most current vintage of ACS data is released each year, usually in December. The layer always contains the latest available ACS 5-year estimates. It is updated annually within days of the Census Bureau's release schedule. Click here to learn more about ACS data releases.Boundaries come from the US Census TIGER geodatabases, specifically, the National Sub-State Geography Database (named tlgdb_(year)_a_us_substategeo.gdb). Boundaries are updated at the same time as the data updates (annually), and the boundary vintage appropriately matches the data vintage as specified by the Census. These are Census boundaries with water and/or coastlines erased for cartographic and mapping purposes. For census tracts, the water cutouts are derived from a subset of the 2020 Areal Hydrography boundaries offered by TIGER. Water bodies and rivers which are 50 million square meters or larger (mid to large sized water bodies) are erased from the tract level boundaries, as well as additional important features. For state and county boundaries, the water and coastlines are derived from the coastlines of the 2023 500k TIGER Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles. These are erased to more accurately portray the coastlines and Great Lakes. The original AWATER and ALAND fields are still available as attributes within the data table (units are square meters).The States layer contains 52 records - all US states, Washington D.C., and Puerto RicoCensus tracts with no population that occur in areas of water, such as oceans, are removed from this data service (Census Tracts beginning with 99).Percentages and derived counts, and associated margins of error, are calculated values (that can be identified by the "_calc_" stub in the field name), and abide by the specifications defined by the American Community Survey.Field alias names were created based on the Table Shells file available from the American Community Survey Summary File Documentation page.Negative values (e.g., -4444...) have been set to null, with the exception of -5555... which has been set to zero. These negative values exist in the raw API data to indicate the following situations:The margin of error column indicates that either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute a standard error and thus the margin of error. A statistical test is not appropriate.Either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute an estimate, or a ratio of medians cannot be calculated because one or both of the median estimates falls in the lowest interval or upper interval of an open-ended distribution.The median falls in the lowest interval of an open-ended distribution, or in the upper interval of an open-ended distribution. A statistical test is not appropriate.The estimate is controlled. A statistical test for sampling variability is not appropriate.The data for this geographic area cannot be displayed because the number of sample cases is too small.

SA2 based data for Language Spoken at Home by Sex, in Place of Enumeration Profile (PEP), 2016 Census. Count of persons. The list of languages consists of the most common Language Spoken at Home …Show full descriptionSA2 based data for Language Spoken at Home by Sex, in Place of Enumeration Profile (PEP), 2016 Census. Count of persons. The list of languages consists of the most common Language Spoken at Home responses reported in the 2011 Census. The data is by SA2 2016 boundaries. Periodicity: 5-Yearly. Note: There are small random adjustments made to all cell values to protect the confidentiality of data. These adjustments may cause the sum of rows or columns to differ by small amounts from table totals. For more information visit the data source: http://www.abs.gov.au/census. Copyright attribution: Government of the Commonwealth of Australia - Australian Bureau of Statistics, (2017): ; accessed from AURIN on 12/3/2020. Licence type: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia (CC BY 2.5 AU)