The Most Spoken Languages In America

Immigration has largely influenced the demographic patterns of the United States. The predominant majority of US immigrants hail from neighboring Mexico and other Latin American countries. A large influx of Hispanic people has made Spanish the second most widely spoken language within the country, and the number is ever growing as Spanish-speaking influences are unlikely to lose ground anytime soon. In California and Texas, the Spanish language is spoken and understood to some degree by over 20% of the population. Other states where Spanish’s influence can be greatly felt are New York and Florida. With the latter, this can be attributed to being close to Cuba and receiving many immigrants from there and from elsewhere in the Caribbean.

The Role of Media

Technology has had a direct influence on the frequency and variety of languages being spoken in the United States. This has increased with the high level of tech dominance that the country has come to enjoy in recent years. Tech companies, in a bid to keep up with a high level of global competition, have been forced to call in expatriates from other tech dominant nations. Most of these expatriates are from Asian countries where technology has been at the forefront of economic development for decades. Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken Asian language, with the figure being put close to 2% of the United States general population being able to communicate in it. Many Asians have also moved into the US for other business purposes as well. Besides Chinese, other Asian languages commonly heard spoken within the United States include Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

German and Jewish Influences

Though English and Spanish lead the pack of common languages spoken in the United States, two other interesting common languages are German and Hebrew. There have been large numbers of German immigrants coming into America for centuries since the colonization of the New World. In fact, German-Americans are among the largest groups of ethnic identities present within the country, and the German influence in the United States can be heavily felt in places such as Chicago and the Dakotas. Hebrew is also commonly spoken around the country, and this can be explained by the fact that the United States is also one of the countries with the highest Jewish populations outside Israel. The United States and Israel share very close political and economic ties, and this has contributed to a large influx of Israelis into the country. Many Jews also immigrated to the US from Europe, especially in relation to the rise of Fascism and the events of World War II, along with other tragedies on the European continent during the 20th century. Los Angeles and New York City are great examples of American cities with large Jewish populations today, with a preferred language of communication often being Hebrew.