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The Census Bureau has been crunching numbers and finds that the number of American households where people speak a language other than English is growing faster than ever.
And, as expected, Arizona’s among the states with the largest percentage of households where a language other than English is spoken.
According to the census data, the number of Americans — age 5 and older — who regularly speak non-English languages at home grew by 140 percent from 1980 to 2007.
In that same period, the country’s population only grew by 34 percent.
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Spanish is by far the most common language — other than English — spoken in American households, with more than 34 million people speaking it in 2007, up from 11 million in 1980.
Of those who reported speaking a language other than English at home, 60 percent claim they speak English “very well,” or “muy bien” for those who don’t fall in the 60 percent.
In Arizona, 28.5 percent of the population reported speaking a language other than English at home, ranking the state behind New Mexico with 35 percent, Texas with 34 percent, and California — where 42 percent of the population reported speaking a language other than English.
For the Census Bureau’s full report, click here.
