in
Seattle labeled in four languages:
English,
Chinese,
Vietnamese (written as "ràc" instead of "rác"), and
Spanish.
Basura also exists as a
loanword in
Tagalog, spoken in the city. Some of the first European languages to be spoken in the U.S. were English,
Dutch,
French,
Spanish, and
Swedish. From the mid-19th century, the nation had large numbers of immigrants who spoke little or no English. The laws, constitutions, and legislative proceedings of some states and territories appeared in the languages of politically important immigrant groups. There have been bilingual schools and local newspapers in such languages as
German,
Ukrainian,
Hungarian,
Irish,
Italian,
Norwegian,
Greek,
Polish,
Swedish,
Romanian,
Czech,
Japanese,
Yiddish,
Hebrew,
Lithuanian,
Welsh,
Cantonese,
Bulgarian,
Dutch,
Portuguese,
Persian,
Arabic and others. These flourished despite English-only laws in some jurisdictions prohibiting church services, telephone conversations, and even conversations in the street or on railway platforms in a language other than English, up until the first of these laws was ruled unconstitutional in 1923 (
Meyer v. Nebraska). Typically, immigrant languages tend to be lost through assimilation within two or three generations. Several states and territories have native populations who spoke their own language prior to joining the United States, and have maintained their original languages for centuries. The languages include
Alaskan Russian,
Louisiana French,
New Mexican Spanish,
Pennsylvania Dutch, and
Puerto Rican Spanish.
English (245.69 million speakers) English was inherited from
British colonization, and it is spoken by the majority of the population. English has become increasingly common; when the United States was founded, just 40% of Americans spoke English.. In 2002, 87% of Americans spoke English as their first language. It serves as the
de facto national language, the language in which government business is carried out. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 80% spoke only English at home and all but approximately 13,600,000 U.S. residents age 5 and over speak English "well" or "very well".
American English is different from
British English in terms of spelling (one 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. 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 (42.03 million speakers) Spanish was also inherited from colonization and is sanctioned as official in the commonwealth of
Puerto Rico, where it is the general language of instruction in schools and universities. In the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all territories except Puerto Rico, Spanish is taught as a foreign or
second language. It is spoken at home in areas with large Hispanic populations: the
Southwestern United States along the border with Mexico, as well as in Florida, parts of California, 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. Younger generations of non-Hispanics in the United States choose to study Spanish as a foreign or second language in far greater numbers than other second-language options. This might be due in part to the growing Hispanic population and the increasing popularity of Latin American movies and music performed in the Spanish language. A 2009 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the
United States Census Bureau, showed that Spanish was spoken at home by over 35 million people aged 5 or older, making the United States the world's fifth-largest Spanish-speaking community, outnumbered only by Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Argentina. Since then, the number of persons reported on the ACS to speak Spanish at home has increased (see table).
New Mexican Spanish In
northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, Spanish speakers have been isolated for centuries in the southern
Rockies, and developed a distinct dialect of Spanish spoken nowhere else:
New Mexican Spanish. The dialect features a mix of
Castilian,
Galician and, more recently,
Mexican Spanish, as well as
Pueblo loan words. New Mexican Spanish also contains a large proportion of English loan words, particularly for technological words (e.g.
bos,
troca, and
telefón).
Speakers of New Mexican Spanish are mainly descendants of Spanish colonists who arrived in New Mexico in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. During this time, contact with the rest of Spanish America was limited, and New Mexican Spanish developed on its own course. In the meantime, Spanish colonists coexisted with and intermarried with Puebloan peoples and Navajos. After the Mexican–American War, New Mexico and all its inhabitants came under the governance of the English-speaking United States, and for the next hundred years, English-speakers increased in number.
Puerto Rican Spanish . Puerto Rican Spanish is the main language and dialect of the people of
Puerto Rico, as well as many people descended from Puerto Ricans elsewhere throughout the United States.
Spanglish 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
Mexico–United States border (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), Florida, and New York City.
Chinese (3.4 million speakers) The population of Chinese speakers in the United States was increasing rapidly in the 20th century because the number of Chinese immigrants has increased at a rate of more than 50% since 1940. Some 2.8 million Americans speak some
variety of Chinese, which combined are counted by the federal census as the third most-spoken language in the country. Until the late 20th century,
Yue dialects, including
Cantonese and
Taishanese, were the most common dialects among immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, especially in California. Since the opening of the
People's Republic of China,
Mandarin, the official language in the PRC and
Republic of China (Taiwan), has become increasingly prevalent. Many Americans of all ethnic backgrounds are also learning Mandarin and, to a far lesser extent, Cantonese.
Chinese-Americans in the California Gold Rush and their descendants spoke a variety of the
Cantonese language influenced by American English and American societal concepts foreign to Cantonese speakers in Modern China, either through direct English translations such as "Alpine" borrowed from (
Alpine County, California), or neologisms such as "Yellow Eagle" (
Gold dollar), "Emancipated Woman" (Feminist), and "Telephone". It also maintains older
Qing Dynasty Cantonese vocabulary that has fallen out of use in Cantonese spoken in Modern China.
French (1.18 million speakers; 2.07 million including Haitian Creole) French is the seventh most spoken language in the United States according to the 2020 ACS. It is the fourth most common if
Haitian Creole (a French-based dialect that is not mutually intelligible with standard French) is combined and counted as French. The ACS lists Haitian Creole separately from French, which encompasses standard French, Louisiana Creole, and Louisiana Cajun varieties. In the United States, French is spoken mainly by the
Louisiana Creole, native
French,
Cajun, and
French-Canadian populations, along with more recent immigrants from Haiti. It is widely spoken in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and in Louisiana, with notable Francophone enclaves in
St. Clair County, Michigan, many rural areas of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the
northern San Francisco Bay area. Because of its legacy in Louisiana, that state is served by the
Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), the only state agency in the United States whose mission is to serve a linguistic population. In October 2018, Louisiana became the first U.S. state to join the
Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Three varieties of French developed within what is now the United States in colonial times including
Louisiana French,
Missouri French, and
New England French (essentially a variant of
Canadian French). French is the second-most-spoken language in the states of Louisiana and Maine. 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 or New Brunswick. More than 13 million Americans possess primary French heritage, but only 2 million speak French, regional French creoles, or other varieties of the language at home. The largest concentration of French speakers in the country is in Louisiana.
Louisiana French Louisiana French (; ) is an umbrella term for the dialects and
varieties of the French language spoken traditionally in colonial
Lower Louisiana. As of today Louisiana French is primarily used in the U.S. state of Louisiana, specifically in the southern
parishes. French is spoken across ethnic and racial lines by
Louisiana French people who may identify as
Cajuns or
Creoles as well as
Chitimacha,
Houma,
Biloxi,
Tunica,
Choctaw,
Acadians, and
French Indian among others. For these reasons, as well as the relatively small influence
Acadian French has had on the region, the label Louisiana French or Louisiana Regional French () is generally regarded as more accurate and inclusive than "Cajun French" and is the preferred term by
linguists and
anthropologists. However, "Cajun French" is commonly used in
lay discourse by speakers of the language and other inhabitants of Louisiana.
German (857,000 speakers; 1.29 million including Yiddish and Pennsylvania German dialects) states.
German was the 13th most common language spoken at home, according to the 2020 ACS survey. If German-related dialects such as Yiddish and varieties such as Pennsylvania German (Amish) are included, German ranks among the top ten languages spoken in U.S. homes. (The ACS lists both Yiddish and Pennsylvania German separately from German.) By the 18th century, German was a widely spoken language in some American colonies, especially Pennsylvania, where a number of German-speaking Protestants and other religious minorities settled to escape persecution in Europe. Another wave of settlement occurred when Germans fleeing the failure of 19th-century German revolutions immigrated to the United States. Throughout the century, a large number of these immigrants settled in urban areas, where entire neighborhoods were German-speaking and numerous local German-language newspapers and periodicals were established. Germans also took up farming around the country, including the
Texas Hill Country, at this time. The language was widely spoken until the United States entered
World War I. In the early 20th century, German was the most widely studied foreign language in the United States, and prior to
World War I, more than 6% of American schoolchildren received their primary education exclusively in German, though some of these Germans came from areas outside Germany. Currently, more than 49 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 at home, according to recent
American Community Surveys. The
Amish, concentrated in the State of Pennsylvania, speak a dialect of German known as
Pennsylvania Dutch; it is widely spoken in Amish communities today. Waves of colonial Palatines from the Rhenish Palatinate, one of the Holy Roman states, settled in the
Province of New York and the
Province of Pennsylvania. The first Palatines arrived in the late 1600s but the majority came throughout the 1700s; they were known collectively as the
Palatine Dutch. The
Pennsylvania Dutch settled other states, including Indiana and Ohio. For many years, the term "Palatine" meant
German American. There is a myth (known as the
Muhlenberg legend) 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. The myth also extends to German being the second official language of Pennsylvania; however, Pennsylvania has no official language. Although more than 41 million Americans claim to have German ancestors, only 857,000 Americans spoke German at home in 2020.
Pennsylvania Dutch areas of the
United States Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German is a dialect of
Palatine German that is traditionally spoken by the
Pennsylvania Dutch, and has settled the Midwest, in places such as Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and other states, where many of the speakers live today. It evolved from the
German dialect of the
Palatinate brought over to America by
Palatines from the
Holy Roman Empire in the 1600s. They settled on land sold to them by
William Penn. Germantown included not only Mennonites, but also Quakers. The Pennsylvania Dutch speak Pennsylvania Dutch, and adhere to different Christian denominations: Lutherans,
German Reformed,
Mennonites,
Amish,
German Baptist Brethren, Roman Catholics; today Pennsylvania Dutch is mainly spoken by
Old Order Amish and
Old Order Mennonites.
Texas German Texas German is a group of High German dialects spoken by Texas Germans, descendants of German immigrants who settled in Texas in the mid-19th century.
Yiddish Yiddish, a
West Germanic language historically spoken by
Ashkenazi Jews in Central and eastern Europe, has a much longer history in the United States than Hebrew. It has been present since at least the late 19th century and continues to have roughly 148,000 speakers as of the 2009 American Community Survey. Though they came from varying geographic backgrounds and nuanced approaches to worship, immigrant Jews of Central Europe, Germany and Russia were often united under a common understanding of the Yiddish language once they settled in America. By the early 20th century, dozens of publications in the language were available in most East Coast cities. Though the use of Yiddish has declined by quite a bit since the end of World War II, it has by no means disappeared. Many Israeli immigrants and expatriates have at least some understanding of the language in addition to Hebrew, and many of the descendants of the great migration of
Ashkenazi Jews of the past century pepper their English vocabulary with
Yiddish loan words. Yiddish remains the lingua franca among American
Haredi Jews (particularly
Hasidic Jewry), whose communities are concentrated in Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and the suburbs of New York. A significant diffusion of Yiddish loan words into the non-Jewish population continues to be a distinguishing feature of New York City English. Some of these words include
glitch, chutzpah, mensch, kvetch, klutz, etc.
Russian (1.04 million speakers) In the United States, the
Russian language is spoken mostly in urban areas of the states of New York, California, Washington, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. It is also spoken in isolated areas of Alaska originally settled in the 18th and 19th centuries by Russian
promyshlenniki; these were largely Siberian fur hunters, river merchants, and mercenaries who later worked as sailors, carpenters, artisans, and craftsmen. In the 21st century, Russian is especially spoken in immigrant neighborhoods of larger U.S. cities: New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Sacramento, Spokane, Miami,
Portland, Oregon, and two Portland suburbs,
Vancouver, Washington and
Woodburn, Oregon. From 1799 until 1867, the
Russian-American Company owned most all of what became
Alaska Territory. This changed with the formal
sale of Alaska to the United States on March 30, 1867, after the final resolution of the
Crimean War. The presence of Russian speakers in the United States has always been limited in numbers, and even more so after the assassination of the
Romanov dynasty of
tsars. However, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing until the mid-1990s, many
Russian-speaking Jews from the Soviet Union (and later from its independent constituent republics of Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan) have immigrated to the United States, increasing the use of Russian in the country. The largest Russian-speaking neighborhoods in the United States are found in New York City (specifically the
Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn,
Forest Hills and
Rego Park in Queens, and parts of
Staten Island),
Los Angeles (especially
West Los Angeles and
West Hollywood), neighborhoods of Philadelphia (notably the
Far Northeast), and parts of
Miami (
Sunny Isles Beach). The Russian-language media group
Slavic Voice of America, based in
Dallas, Texas, serves Russian-speaking Americans.
Alaskan Russian Alaskan Russian, known locally as Old Russian, is a dialect of
Russian influenced by the
Alutiiq language spoken by
Alaskan Creoles. Most of its speakers live on
Kodiak Island and in the
Ninilchik (
Kenai Peninsula). It has been isolated from other varieties of Russian for over a century. Kodiak Russian was natively spoken along the Afognak Strait until the
Great Alaskan earthquake and tsunami of 1964. It has become moribund, spoken by only a handful of elderly people, and is virtually undocumented. Ninilchik Russian has been better studied and is more vibrant. It developed from the
Russian colonial settlement of the village of Ninilchik in 1847. Ninilchik Russian vocabulary is clearly
Russian, with a few borrowings from
English and
Alaskan native languages. In
Nikolaevsk, Alaska, 66.57% of the population still spoke Russian at home as late as 2017.
Dutch (142,000 speakers) In a 1990 demographic consensus, 3% of surveyed citizens claimed to be of Dutch descent. Modern estimates place the
Dutch American population (with total or partial Dutch heritage) at 3.1 million, or 0.93%, lagging just a bit behind
Norwegian Americans and
Swedish Americans, Americans claimed total Dutch heritage. An estimated 141,580 people, or 0.0486%, in the United States still speak the Dutch language, including its
Flemish variant, at home as of 2013. This is in addition to the 23,010 and 510 speakers, respectively, of the
Afrikaans and
West-Frisian languages, both closely related to Dutch. In 2021, 95.3% of the total Dutch-American population aged 5 years and over spoke only English at home.
Low Dutch There has been a Dutch presence in North America since establishment of 17th-century colony of
New Netherland (parts of New York, New Jersey and Delaware), where Dutch was spoken by the
New Netherlander, the original settlers, and their descendants. It was still spoken in the region at the time of the American Revolution and thereafter. For example,
Alexander Hamilton's wife,
Eliza Hamilton, attended a Dutch-language church during their marriage. African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist
Sojourner Truth (born "Isabella Baumfree") was a native speaker of Dutch.
Martin Van Buren, the first president born in the United States following its independence from Great Britain, spoke Dutch as his
native language. He is the only U.S. president whose
first language was not English. Vernacular dialects of Dutch were spoken in northeastern New Jersey (Bergen, Hudson, Passaic county) and the Capital District of New York until they gradually declined throughout the 20th century. ==Indigenous languages==