California's Top Multilingual Communities Unveiled: Beyond English Dominance

There are a lot of languages around the world and many of them are spoken right here in various households around California.

Of all the options, the top 4 will definitely surprise you.

More People in CA Speak Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog Than Any Other Language Besides English

It won’t surprise you that English is the language spoken by the majority of people in California since of the more than 39 million residents, around 19 million of them are White (non-Hispanic). You also might not be surprised that Spanish is the second most used language in the state as more than 39 percent of residents are Hispanic.

But the 3rd and 4th most popular languages will probably come as a surprise. Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese) is spoken by 5.86 million people, making it the 3rd most used in the state. Tagalog (including Filipino) follows Chinese as the 4th most spoken language being used in around 773 thousand households.

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The numbers don’t take into account households that may speak multiple languages. Only the main language spoken was used in the data found on DataUSA.io.

After English, Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog - these are the most popular languages spoken in California.

Vietnamese
Korean
Persian (including Farsi and Dari)
Arabic
Hindi
Armenian
Russian

Surprisingly, as one of the main languages in other states after English and Spanish, German is only spoken by a small percentage (about 92 thousand households) in California.

Data is based on numbers counted in 2022. You can also check previous years' stats at DataUSA.

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