Languages Used in the United States

Common Beliefs

Think about the languages used in the United States, now and over time. How do you think most people would answer the following questions? What are your own best guesses, without looking anything up?

• Is the U.S. generally viewed, by most people, as a monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual country?

• Currently, how many people in the U.S. speak a language other than English? Which languages are they? Do people who speak a language other than English at home also know English?

• As of 1776, what percentage of people in the new U.S. spoke English? As the U.S. expanded during the 19th century, did anything happen to overall language-use patterns? Did overall language-use patterns change in the U.S. during the 20th century or through the beginning of the 21st century?

You probably said that the U.S. is generally described as a monolingual English-speaking country, is that right? I would agree; the U.S. is generally described by most people as monolingual and English-speaking.

You probably also know, of course, that many people in the U.S. speak languages other than English. The most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau show that only 77.5% of people in the U.S. report speaking English only, while 22.5% report speaking a language other than English at home (see also Dietrich & Hernandez, 2022). The most common of the non-English languages in the U.S. is Spanish, by far (spoken by over 43 million people in the U.S.). After that, lists of languages spoken in the U.S. begin to be affected by questions about whether to combine across what might be dialects or might be languages; some lists use “Chinese” as the second most common non-English language, for example, without dividing between Mandarin and Cantonese. Tagalog, Arabic, French (including Cajun French), and Korean are also spoken by well over 1 million people each in the U.S.

You have probably also seen many professional articles begin by asserting that the number of different languages used in the U.S. has increased recently:

“As the 21st century has moved forward, the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic makeup of the United States has been changing steadily.” (ASHA’s Multicultural Ethics statement, Introduction)

“Population shifts in the latter half of the 20th century have expanded the cultural contexts for the professional practices of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and audiologists in the United States.” (Stockman et al., 2008, p. 241)

“Language use in the United States has become increasingly diverse.” (Quach & Tsai, 2017, p. 82)

“The United States is becoming increasingly diverse” racially, ethnically, culturally, and in terms of language and communication. (Weismer & Brown, 2021, p. 4)

So we are viewed as generally monolingual and generally English-speaking, although we do recognize that a noticeable percentage of people in the U.S. speak other languages, mostly Spanish, and the number of other languages seems to have been increasing recently. Is that approximately what you think most people would say?

Get ready for the twist! Some of what we think we know about languages in the U.S. turns out not to be true, or at least turns out to be much more complicated than many people have had the chance to realize.

Better Data

Consider, first, these (accurate) descriptions of language use in the U.S., from Rumbaut and Massey’s (2013) exhaustive and authoritative review (emphases added).

“Contrary to what some Americans seem to believe, the United States historically has been a polyglot nation containing a diverse array of languages.” (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013, p. 141)

“At the time of independence, non-English European immigrants made up one quarter of the population and in Pennsylvania two-fifths of the population spoke German. In addition, an unknown but presumably significant share of the new nation's inhabitants spoke a Native American or African language, suggesting that perhaps a third or more of all Americans spoke a language other than English.” (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013, p. 141)

“With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 (which doubled the size of the country), the Treaty of 1818 with Britain (which added the Oregon Country), the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 with Spain (which gave Florida to the U.S.), and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 (which acquired nearly half of Mexico), tens of thousands of French and Spanish speakers along with many more enslaved people and the diverse indigenous peoples of those vast territories were added to the linguistic mix. Alaska and Hawaii would follow before the end of the 19th century [bringing more indigenous and adopted languages].” (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013, p. 141)

“The revival of immigration [after about 1950, after decreases related to the World Wars and the Great Depression] has simply restored language diversity to something approaching the country's historical status quo, at least as measured by the variety of non-English languages and the number of non-English speakers.” (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013, p. 8).

Did these descriptions surprise you?

Most other analyses of linguistic history in the U.S. from the last several decades agree with Rumbaut and Massey’s conclusions, despite the common views that the U.S. was historically English-speaking and that the use of other languages has increased relatively recently. Stevens’ (1999) data showed, for example, that the percent of U.S. residents born elsewhere who reported speaking little or no English was about the same in 1980 and 1990 as it had been in 1910. Twenty years later, Dietrich and Hernandez’s (2022) review showed that the percentage of the U.S. population who spoke a language other than English at home grew minimally between 2009 and 2019, from 20 percent to 22 percent, as the percentage who spoke English less than “very well” decreased (from 9 percent to 8 percent); that is, English ability actually slightly improved during the 2010s among people who spoke a language other than English (Dietrich & Hernandez, 2022).

The most current available data are similar. As we mentioned briefly above, approximately 22.5% (over 71 million people) of the U.S. population use a language other than English at home, a figure that is slightly above the 20% estimate from 2009 but well below the historic estimates of one quarter to one third. Most of these 71 million people are bi-/multilingual, speaking both their native or home languages and English; that is, only 8.7% of people in the U.S. speak English less than “very well,” and only approximately 4.4% of all U.S. households do not include a person who speaks English “very well.” And the people who speak a language other than English at home and also do not speak English “very well” are concentrated in approximately 20 counties in south Florida, south Texas, and along the southern borders of California, Arizona, and New Mexico; unless you happen to be in one of those small areas, the people you meet who speak a language other than English at home will most likely be bi-/multilingual users of both English and their other language(s).

As MacKey (2013) concluded, from his own exhaustive, authoritative review of language use patterns in Canada and the United States: “Although North Americans have had a worldwide reputation as English-speaking monolinguals, the incidence of plurilingualism in North America is much greater than first meets the ear” (MacKey, 2013, p. 718).

Why Do Common Beliefs Differ from the Actual Data?

Why, then, do we think of the U.S. as a monolingual English-speaking country? And why do we have the related general impression, as Americans and as readers of speech-language pathology articles, that the number of other languages spoken in the U.S. started small and has been increasing over the last several decades, or has been increasing recently? Let’s explore several interwoven answers to these questions.

The first part of the answer comes from the difference between individual multilingualism as a personal ability (sometimes referred to as multilinguality), and societal or collective bilingualism, as a description of a country or region. It is true that the U.S. does not function, as a whole, as a bilingual or multilingual society, or as a society that uses two (or more) official languages. A few states have designated other languages as official (Alaska, notably, recognizes 21 official languages). And, in practice, parts of the southwest from California to Texas demonstrate something close to regional societal bilingualism in English and Spanish, and many other areas throughout the country demonstrate smaller-scale societal bilingualism. No language other than English is used widely throughout the entire U.S., however; it is true, in this sense, that the U.S. is not collectively or societally bilingual as a whole country.

The fact that the bilingualism and multilingualism in the U.S. are primarily individual or regional contributes in many ways to our impression of the U.S. as an English-speaking country. Our nationwide use of English is also self-perpetuating, in that it leads immigrant families to learn English by the second generation, if they do not speak English already; current U.S. Census data show that the people most likely not to speak English are older than 65 years and that, in some language communities, less than half the children speak the family’s non-English language (Dietrich & Hernandez, 2022).

Similarly, at an individual level, many of you who are reading this page in English might speak another language or languages at home, with your family, or with your closest friends. Because your bi-/multilingualism is not societal, however, many other people in your community do not speak your home language(s). Thus, you probably speak English with some or even most of the people you encounter outside your home. Do you see what happens next? Imagine that you and a person you are talking to in English each know two other languages, for a total of five languages between you – but because you are using English in your public conversation, no one else will hear any of the other four. The fact that the bi-/multilingualism that does exist in the U.S. is primarily individual, rather than societal, means that most people in the U.S. receive substantial confirming evidence, almost constantly, for their starting bias that the U.S. is a primarily English-speaking country.

A second, and more difficult, aspect of the widespread beliefs that the U.S. started as English speaking and remains primarily monolingual, perhaps with some other languages increasing recently, comes from Rumbaut and Massey’s mention of indigenous languages and enslaved people.

Until approximately the year 1500, the indigenous people of the land currently known as Canada and the United States spoke hundreds of languages from at least ten distinct linguistic families (http://www.native-languages.org/ has an accessible list). Since approximately 1500, however, at least half of those languages have disappeared, and the number of people who speak the others has reduced dramatically. If we include those languages in our thinking, then the best description of language use in North America over the last 500 years would be one of a large and continuing decrease in language diversity, not an increase at all (with some hard-won exceptions attributed to groups such as Native Languages of the Americas).

What about people who were brought to North America or to the U.S. under conditions of slavery and/or lived as enslaved people? Clearly, people brought to North America from the many countries and regions of the African continent or from the Caribbean would have spoken a language or languages other than English. Many sources assert that hundreds of different languages would have been represented, given the linguistic diversity known to exist throughout the African continent. Scholars of historical linguistics also hold multiple opinions about whether and how people who were enslaved continued to use their native languages, developed combinations of languages (pidgins and then creoles) to communicate with the people they found themselves enslaved with or enslaved by, and/or passed their languages to the next generations. These differences of scholarly opinion arise, in large part, because of a lack of data; we are limited to opinions, rather than facts, because the available linguistic records include many complexities and some very telling holes, including that the U.S. Census did not gather language-use data, or attempt to count Native Americans, until 1890.

In short, part of why we have the impression that we are an English-speaking country, and part of why we have the impression that the number of languages used in the U.S. has increased beginning at some point in the last 50 years or so, is that the many languages spoken between approximately 1500 and 2000 by people who were enslaved, conquered, killed, forced to move to reservations, or some combination of these atrocities, simply have not been considered in the arithmetic.

In that decidedly difficult context, it becomes clear that linguistic history and actual language use cannot fully explain how or why monolingual English is generally viewed as the typical, majority, standard, or mainstream language in the United States. There must be some other reasons for why we are convinced that the U.S. is a monolingual English-speaking country and for why we are convinced that the use of other languages did not start to increase until a relatively recent point in our history.

Those other reasons, of course, are social, political, and historical, mixed with the error of looking at only part of an extended timeline. As Rumbaut and Massey (2013) described, the U.S. was multilingual from its founding until at least the beginning of the 20th century. At that point, however, immigration slowed, in part because of the World Wars and the Great Depression. It is therefore not entirely untrue that language diversity has increased (again) during the last 50-80 years or so, but it is untrue to claim that the late 20th or early 21st century represents the beginning of language diversity in the U.S. Again, any recent changes have “simply restored language diversity to something approaching the country's historical status quo, at least as measured by the variety of non-English languages and the number of non-English speakers” (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013, p. 8).

Beyond that somewhat technical issue, it also becomes clear, the more we think about it, that English has been perceived as predominant in the U.S. throughout our country’s history at least in part because the people who spoke English held the social and political power, while the people who spoke other languages in addition to English (or instead of English) did not. Most of our federal elected officials have been English speakers, business is conducted in English, public schools use English — and as we mentioned above, the English-speaking federal officials in the U.S. Census Bureau did not even collect data about language use until 1890 (and have continued to do so only inconsistently since then; see Dietrich & Hernandez, 2022, Appendix A, and see the Your Turn question below about current U.S. Territories). Morgan’s (1996) model of identities (from our Module 2) included “Language Bias” as an axis precisely because of her awareness of this issue: English speakers and English-based systems in the U.S. (especially in educational settings, her emphasis) have typically been able to ignore, avoid, overwhelm, or actively suppress the views and needs of people who speak other languages or would prefer other languages (recall that Morgan used the strong words “domination” and “oppression”) — to the point of somehow convincing all of us that the U.S. is a monolingual, English-speaking country with a new and recent influx of non-English speakers.

Why Does Any of This Matter to Speech-Language Pathology?

How are you feeling?

Depending on your journeys so far in your life, you might be finding this socio-lingual history and these linguo-political discussions invigorating, irrelevant, repetitive, or a bit too social-justicey for your taste.

That’s okay. Remember, we all approach and receive information from our own current vantage points.

And, luckily, we do not need to sidetrack ourselves with social or political disagreements to be able to see parts of what has happened with languages in North America over time, and to be able to see why it matters to our practice in speech-language pathology.

Remember our basic charge: We are required to provide high-quality care to “all populations” and in ways that reflect all persons’ “preferred languages…and other communication needs” (ASHA, 2017). What does that mean, in a country where, in round numbers, somewhere between one fifth and one quarter of the people speak a language other than English at home? What does it mean for us and for our clients that this level of bi-/multilingualism has long been true, even as our country has also been perceived as primarily monolingual English speaking?

One common answer is that it means that our profession needs to attract more bilingual speakers, and that answer is not wrong — but I also find that answer incomplete and actually more than a little problematic, in part because it hands off the responsibility to a conveniently vague “someone else” (see Section Four).

I think a better answer is simply that understanding the realities and the complexities of language use in the U.S. can help all of us provide better, more client-centered care to all our clients. And let’s keep going, because the issue is not merely that one fifth of the people in the U.S. speak a language other than English. The issue is that all of us, and all of our communities, are much more multilingual than we might have previously had the chance to recognize.