Census Data Documents African Language Use in the United States

Filed in Foreign Studies, Research & Studies on November 16, 2015

The United States Census Bureau has released data showing that at least 350 languages other than English are spoken at home by people living in the United States. Some 60 million Americans over the age of 5 speak a language other than English at home. This is about one fifth of all Americans.

It will come as no surprise that the most common language other than English is Spanish. More than 37 million Americans speak Spanish at home. This is more than 61 percent of all Americans who speak a language other than English at home.

Some 894,499 Americans speak an African language at home. More than 322,000 Americans speak the West African languages of Kru, Ibo, or Yoruba. Many of these Americans are of Nigerian descent. About 122,000 American speak the Cushite language. Many of the Cushite speakers are immigrants from Ethiopia or Somalia. There are 88,685 Swahili speakers in the United States. Swahili is spoken in nations of southeast Africa such as Kenya, Mozambique, and Uganda.