Languages in USA

Language

Main article: Languages in the United States

The United States has no official language, but English is the most widely spoken language, spoken by nearly all of American citizens. 97% of Americans speak English well or very well. There have been moves in the past for English to be named as the official language of the United States, but this has been a major political issue for a good part of the country's existence. Some states, such as Alabama, California, Florida, New Hampshire and Oregon have made English the official language at the state level, but there still is strong resistance at the national level.

Spanish is the second most widely spoken language of the U.S., spoken mainly by immigrants or descendants of recent immigrants from Latin America and Spain, but also by generations-old descendants of the original settlers of the traditionally Spanish-held Southwestern United States. Hispanics now make up the largest ethnic minority in the country. There are also large populations of non-Hispanic Americans who speak fluent Spanish. Spanish is widely taught as a second language, especially in areas with large Hispanic populations such as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Florida and New York. Younger generations of non-Hispanics seem to be learning Spanish in larger numbers, thanks to the growing Hispanic population and increasing popularity of Latin American movies and music performed in the Spanish language. Over 30 million Americans, roughly 12% of the population, speak Spanish, making the U.S. the fifth largest Spanish speaking population in the world after Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and Argentina.

Chinese, mostly of the Cantonese dialect, is the third largest language spoken in the United States, almost completely spoken within Chinese-American populations, especially in California, although many young Americans, not of Chinese descent, have become interested in learning the language, though it is the Mandarin dialect that is mostly taught. Over 2 million Americans speak Chinese dialects.

Other European languages are widely spoken as well. French, the fourth largest foreign language, is spoken mainly by the small native French, Haitian or French-Canadian populations. It is widely spoken in Maine and in Louisiana, a former colony of France, where it is still used with English as the state's de facto official language. German, although not widely spoken, was the second official language of Pennsylvania until 1950. Italian, Polish and Greek are still widely spoken among populations descending from immigrants from those countries in the early 20th century, but the use of these languages is dwindling as older generations die out. Starting in the 1970's and continuing until the mid 1990's, many people from the Soviet Union and later its constituent republics such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan have immigrated to the United States, causing Russian to become widely spoken in the United States.

Tagalog and Vietnamese have over one million speakers in the United States, almost entirely within recent immigrant populations.

There are also a small population of Native Americans who still speak their native languages, but these populations are dropping and the languages are almost never widely used outside of reservations. Hawaiian, although having few native speakers, is still used at the state level in Hawaii along with English.