Languages of the United States

The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English (specifically, American English), which is the de facto national language. It is also the language spoken at home by the great majority of the U.S. population (approximately 78.5%). Many other languages are also spoken at home, especially Spanish (13.2% of the population), according to the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau; these include indigenous languages originally spoken by Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and peoples from the United States unincorporated territories, languages brought in different eras to the regions now comprising the U.S. by people from Europe, Africa, Asia, other parts of the Americas, and Oceania, as well as multiple dialects, creole languages, pidgin languages, and sign languages originating in what is now the U.S. Interlingua, an international auxiliary language, was created in the U.S. The majority of foreign language speakers in the U.S. are bilingual or multilingual, and they commonly speak English. Although 21.5% of U.S. residents report that they speak a language other than English at home, only 8.2% speak English less than "very well." Approximately 430 languages are spoken or signed by the population, of which 177 are indigenous to the U.S. or its territories. Based on annual data from the American Community Survey, the United States Census Bureau regularly publishes information on the most common languages spoken at home. It also reports the English-speaking ability of people who speak a language other than English at home. In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau published information on the number of speakers of over 350 languages as surveyed by the ACS from 2009 to 2013, but it does not regularly tabulate and report data for that many languages. According to the ACS, the most common languages spoken at home by people aged five years of age or older in the period from 2017 to 2021 were: English 245 million (78.5%) Spanish 41.