What languages do adult immigrants speak?
The majority of individuals who speak a language other than English at home speak Spanish (60%). The number of Spanish speakers is more than 10 times the number of individuals who speak the second most prevalent language, Chinese. The remaining eight of the top 10 languages spoken are (in this order) French, German, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Italian, Korean, Russian, and Polish. For more information see “Adult Non-Native English Speakers in the United States” in the Practitioner Toolkit: Working with Adult English Language Learners and America Speaks: A Demographic Profile of Foreign-Language Speakers for the United States: 2000.
