List of most commonly learned foreign languages in the United States
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. The tables below provide a list of foreign languages most frequently taught in American schools and colleges. They reflect the popularity of these languages in terms of the total number of enrolled students in the United States. (Here, a foreign language means any language other than English, and includes American Sign Language.)
Contents
Lists
Below are the top foreign languages studied in public K-12 schools (i.e., primary and secondary schools). The tables correspond to the 18.5% (some 8.9 million) of all K-12 students in the U.S. (about 49 million) who take foreign-language classes.[1]
K-12
Rank | Language | Enrollments | Percentage |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Spanish | 6,418,331 | 72.06% |
2 | French | 1,254,243 | 14.08% |
3 | German | 395,019 | 4.43% |
4 | Latin | 205,158 | 2.30% |
5 | Japanese | 72,845 | 0.82% |
6 | Italian | 65,058 | 0.73% |
7 | Chinese | 59,860 | 0.67% |
8 | American Sign Language | 41,579 | 0.46% |
9 | Russian | 12,389 | 0.14% |
Others[2] | 255,825 | 2.87% | |
Total | 8,907,201 | 100% |
Colleges and universities
Below are the top foreign languages studied in American institutions of higher education (i.e., colleges and universities), based on fall 2013 enrollments.[3]
Rank | Language | Enrollments | Percentage |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Spanish | 790,756 | 50.6% |
2 | French | 197,757 | 12.7% |
3 | American Sign Language | 109,577 | 7.0% |
4 | German | 86,700 | 5.5% |
5 | Italian | 71,285 | 4.6% |
6 | Japanese | 66,740 | 4.3% |
7 | Chinese | 61,055 | 3.9% |
8 | Arabic | 32,286 | 2.1% |
9 | Latin | 27,192 | 1.7% |
10 | Russian | 21,962 | 1.4% |
11 | Greek, Ancient | 12,917 | 0.8% |
12 | Hebrew, Biblical | 12,551 | 0.8% |
13 | Portuguese | 12,415 | 0.8% |
14 | Korean | 12,229 | 0.8% |
15 | Hebrew, Modern | 6,698 | 0.4% |
Others | 40,059 | 2.6% | |
Total | 1,562,179 | 100% |
List of top five most commonly learned languages by year
Grades K-12
Year | Languages | Source | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | % | 2 | % | 3 | % | 4 | % | 5 | % | ||
2004-2005 | Spanish | 72.9 | French | 15.0 | German | 4.2 | Latin | 2.6 | Japanese | 0.7 | [1] |
2007-2008 | Spanish | 72.1 | French | 14.1 | German | 4.4 | Latin | 2.3 | Japanese | 0.8 | [1] |
Higher education
Year | Languages | Source | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | % | 2 | % | 3 | % | 4 | % | 5 | % | ||
1960 | French | 37.9 | Spanish | 29.7 | German | 24.2 | Russian | 5.1 | Italian | 1.8 | [3] |
1968 | French | 34.4 | Spanish | 32.3 | German | 19.2 | Russian | 3.7 | Latin | 3.0 | |
1980 | Spanish | 41.0 | French | 26.9 | German | 13.7 | Italian | 3.8 | Latin | 2.7 | |
1990 | Spanish | 45.1 | French | 23.0 | German | 11.3 | Italian | 4.2 | Japanese | 3.9 | |
1995 | Spanish | 53.2 | French | 18.0 | German | 8.5 | Japanese | 3.9 | Italian | 3.8 | |
1998 | Spanish | 55.6 | French | 17.0 | German | 7.6 | Italian | 4.2 | Japanese | 3.7 | |
2002 | Spanish | 53.4 | French | 14.5 | German | 6.5 | Italian | 4.6 | American Sign | 4.4 | |
2006 | Spanish | 52.2 | French | 13.1 | German | 6.0 | American Sign | 5.1 | Italian | 5.0 | |
2009 | Spanish | 51.4 | French | 12.9 | German | 5.7 | American Sign | 5.5 | Italian | 4.8 | |
2013 | Spanish | 50.6 | French | 12.7 | American Sign | 7.0 | German | 5.5 | Italian | 4.6 |
See also
- Language education in the United States
- Less Commonly Taught Languages
- Spanish language in the United States
- World language
References
External links
- Enrollments in languages other than English, Modern Language Association
- Most Popular Foreign Languages, Forbes
<templatestyles src="Asbox/styles.css"></templatestyles>