The published data varies in the amount of detail provided each year. In
2000 and 1990, language spoken was a part of Summary File 3. For the 2000 census, data was published for 30 languages, chosen for their nationwide distribution, and 10 language groupings (see list below). Data from households which report languages other than the 30 are reported under the language groupings. Thus, languages which are widespread in certain areas of the country but not nationally get put together, even in block level data.
Lithuanian, and
Welsh are simply "Other Indo-European languages,"
Yoruba and
Swahili are simply "African languages," and
Indonesian and
Hakka are simply "Other Asian languages." Several locally very well represented languages, such as
Punjabi and
Pennsylvania German, are collated into smaller groupings. Native North American languages besides
Navajo are also collated, though they are reported on several geographic levels in another data set. For the 2009-2013 ACS data, detailed information was provided on over 300 languages. In addition to the number of speakers reported for each language, the count of speakers whose English speaking ability is less than "very well" is also reported. Updated information is available via the Census Bureau's American Community Survey Data page. == Data usage ==