How many languages can you speak? Are you proficient in one, two, four or ten languages? Yes, there are people who can speak ten languages fluently. They are gifted and have a way with a mastery of languages in a manner that few would. Researchers have variously reported that knowledge of local languages can give a foreign resident much impetus and advantages that work for better social bonding.
Do you know why multicultural people are the most happy, cause it's good to mix things up!
It is always obvious that the knowledge of a second or third language can have tangible benefits on one's career prospects. In some cases, it can even influence a person's chances of getting hired. The US is, notably, built on factors like immigration. For these reasons, a considerable portion of the country's population is known to speak English only as a second language. It would be interesting to discover which are the most popular languages spoken in the US today.
Let us find out:
English
English is generally considered as the national language in the US. It is obvious that this is the most widely spoken language, not only in America, but the whole world. English always occupies the top position in the sectors of business, the academia and tourism. Moreover, it has become an essential tool of creating significant business connections everywhere in the world. If you want to benefit to the maximum with your stay in the US, it is essential to have an extensive mastery of the English language.
Spanish
After English, there is a big demand for the use of Spanish language as a subsidiary means of communication. The main reason is that the US shares a border with both Central and Latin America. It does not, therefore, come as surprise that this is the case. The most interesting thing is: There are now more speakers of the Spanish language in America than there are in Spain itself. A report by the New York Post newspaper indicated that there are over 41 million people who are native speakers of the Spanish language, and who live in the US. The report indicated that another 11.6 million people are bilingual speakers of this language.
A US Census Office report suggests that, soon, there will be about 138 million speakers of the Spanish language in the United States. This makes America to be the world's largest nation with a Spanish speaking population. About one-third of the nation's population is, therefore, Spanish-speaking, this being their mother-tongue.
The US states of California and Florida have the largest population of Spanish-speaking people. You will, however, find many Spanish-speaking peoples scattered all over the United States. For this reason, if you stay in the country, even for a short while, it is important to have a little knowledge of the language; just to keep you going.
Chinese
Almost three million people in America speak one type of the Chinese dialect. This includes Cantonese, Mandarin and other languages native to China. There is no doubt that China is rapidly becoming a world trading superpower. The country is increasingly having more and more connections with many peoples of the world. When you visit some of the more famous US cities, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, one of the most prominent features there is the availability of a large colony of Chinese -speaking peoples who are residents. Interestingly, this situation is replicated in many other countries, away from the USA. As China's superpower status gets boosted daily, the Chinese language is equally gaining ground and spreading like bush-fire. Of course, the USA is mere microcosm of this.
Tagalog
Tagalog is a language whose history and tradition can be traced away to the Philippines. Tagalog is spoken by a little more than 1.5 million people in the USA. The number of people who speak Tagalog in the US has actually tripled in the last thirty years. Surprisingly, this figure has even surpassed the growth rate of such leading languages as French and Vietnamese.
Vietnamese
Despite the phenomenal rise of other languages in the US, the Vietnamese language has also had a significant increase in recent years. By last 2018, there were about 4.5 million people speaking Vietnamese in the entire US.
French
From the year 1980, there was a 28% increase in the number of people who speak French in America. Moreover, Canada boasts of hosting the largest colony of people speaking French. The largest colony of these people today reside in the Canadian province of Quebec and other nearby cities. The North-Eastern states have the largest single settlement of this population. One possible reason for this is the influence of the French-Canadian population that lurks somewhere in the immediate neighborhood.