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Language
Main article: Languages of the United States
See also: Language Spoken at Home in the United States of America, List of endangered languages in the United States and Language education in the United States

Languages spoken at home by more than 1 million persons in the U.S. (2010)^[220]
Language	Percent of population	Number of speakers	Number who speak English well or very well
English (only)	80%	233,780,338	All
Combined total of all languages other than English	20%	57,048,617	43,659,301
Spanish (excluding Puerto Rico and Spanish Creole)	12%	35,437,985	25,561,139
Chinese (including Cantonese and Mandarin)	0.9%	2,567,779	1,836,263
Tagalog	0.5%	1,542,118	1,436,767
Vietnamese	0.4%	1,292,448	879,157
French (including Cajun but not Haitian Creole)	0.4%	1,288,833	1,200,497
Korean	0.4%	1,108,408	800,500
German	0.4%	1,107,869	1,057,836

Source: 2010 American Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau. Most Americans who speak a language other
than English at home also report speaking English "well" or "very well." For the language groups listed above, the
strongest English-language proficiency is among native speakers of German (96% report that they speak English "well"
or "very well"), followed by speakers of French (93.5%), Tagalog (92.8%), Spanish (74.1%), Korean (71.5%),
Chinese (70.4%), and Vietnamese (66.9%).
English (American English) is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2010, about 230 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language.^[221][222] Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in 28 states.^[13]
Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii, by state law.^[223] Alaska recognizes twenty Native languages.^[224] While neither has an official language,New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.^[225] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.^[226] Many jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English speakers produce government materials, especially voting information, in the most commonly spoken languages in those jurisdictions.
Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan^[227] and Chamorro^[228] are recognized by American Samoaand Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands;^[229] Cherokee is officially recognized by the Cherokee Nationwithin the Cherokee tribal jurisdiction area in eastern Oklahoma;^[230] Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico and is more widely spoken than English there.^[231]
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Arabic and Urdu (Pakistan's national language) are the fastest growing foreign languages spoken at American households. According to the survey, more than 63.2 million US residents speak a language other than English at home. In recent years, Arabic speaking residents increased by 29%, Urdu by 23% and Persian by 9%.^[232]
The most widely taught foreign languages at all levels in the United States (in terms of enrollment numbers) are: Spanish (around 7.2 million students), French (1.5 million), and German (500,000). Other commonly taught languages (with 100,000 to 250,000 learners) include Latin, Japanese, American Sign Language, Italian, and Chinese.^[233][234] 18% of all Americans claim to speak at least one language in addition to English.^[235]