Language use in the United States

The US Census Bureau Report released on 6 August 2013 revealed that 6.5 lakh people in the US speak Hindi, while over 8 lakh people speak various regional Indian languages. 

The report, titled Language Use in the United States: 2011, details the number of people speaking languages other than English at home and their ability to speak English, by selected social and demographic characteristics. The report shows South Asian languages have registered a substantial growth rate in the past decade. 

The report revealed that South Asian languages in particular experienced high levels of growth. The South Asian languages, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil grew by 115 per cent, and Hindi grew by 105 per cent. Punjabi, Bengali, and Marathi grew by 86 percent. The slowest growing South Asian languages were Gujarati (52 per cent) and Urdu (42 per cent). 

In addition to English and Spanish, there were six languages in 2011 spoken at home by at least by one million people. They are Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, French, German and Korean. According to the census, as many as 6,48,983 residents of the United States speak Hindi, with Urdu and Gujarati being spoken by 3,73,851 and 3,58,422 people respectively. As many as 8,15,345 Americans speak other Indic languages. The data, taken from the American Community Survey, shows that more than half (58 per cent) of US residents older than 5 years who speak a language other than English at home, also speak English very well. This study provides evidence of the growing role of languages other than English in the US national fabric.