How Many People Speak Spanish In The US?

Have you ever wondered how common and significant the Spanish language is in the US?

Over 57 million of the 531 million Spanish speakers in the world live in the United States.

Pretty impressive, right?

But how is Spanish more popular in the United States? Exactly how many people speak Spanish in the United States?

Let’s find out!

This article gives the exact idea of people who speak Spanish in the United States, so without wasting time, let’s explore some stats and figures about How many people speak Spanish in the United States.

How Many People Speak Spanish In The United States: General Statistics

1. As per the latest data for 2023-2024, there are approximately 57 million people in the United States who speak Spanish, with around 42 million native Spanish speakers and 15 million being bilingual.
2. Spanish is considered as the 4th largest Spanish-speaking language among all languages. Several Native Americans picked Spanish as a subject in school as a result of its rising popularity.
3. 41.8 million people in the United States speak Spanish. (American Community Survey, 2019)
4. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States.
5. In the United States, 13% of the population speaks Spanish at home. (38.3 million)
6. The United States has the second-largest population of Spanish speakers in the world.
7. According to Forbes, Mexico has the most significant number of speakers of Spanish.
8. As of 2022, around 42.5 million individuals in the US speak Spanish as their native tongue, accounting for 13.4% of the total population. Additionally, there are 12.2 million bilingual Spanish speakers living in the US.
9. There are around 54.2 million Spanish speakers in the USA overall. Consequently, it has a larger Spanish-speaking population than both Colombia and Spain have. This makes it, after Mexico, the largest Spanish-speaking nation.
10. With more than 6 million students, Spanish is the most learned language in the United States.
11. 41.8 million persons who are five years old or older speak Spanish at home, according to a US Census Bureau study.
12. The proportion of people in the US who are 5 years old or older who speak Spanish at home in each state in 2019.
13. The language that Americans study the most is Spanish. In actuality, more than 70% of K–12 kids and 50% of American college students opt to study Spanish. 
14. As per the data from the 2010 census, there were 36,995,602 people in the United States who spoke Spanish at home, which combined 12.8% of the tidal US population.
15. Other than English, there are more Spanish speakers in the United States than in any other language.
16. It is estimated that, by 2050, the number of Spanish speakers in the United States will triple, which will make it the largest Spanish-speaking population in the world.
17. There are 45.6 million Hispanic people in the United States who speak Spanish as their first or second language.
18. 50% of American college students and more than 70% of K12 students choose to learn Spanish.

Following is the detailed data of people speaking Spanish in the US over the years.

History Of Spanish In The US

19. At least 400 years have passed since the beginning of the Hispanic population in the US. Spanish and English have coexisted in the US for more than four centuries.

Following is the in-depth data on Spanish speakers in the United States

How Many People Speak Spanish In The United States: State Wise

Spanish is spoken by a different amount of people based on the state you’re in; in some regions, fewer people speak it than in others. So let’s examine the top 10 states where Spanish is spoken:

20. Texas – Approximately 8 million individuals, or nearly 30% of the state’s total population, speak Spanish in Texas.
21. California: About 10 million people, or 28% of the state’s population, speak Spanish.
22. Spanish is spoken by around 28% of the population in New Mexico, which has nearly 550,000 people.
23. Nevada – Over 560,000 individuals, or about 21% of the population, speak Spanish in Nevada.
24. Florida has about 4 million Spanish-speaking citizens or about 20.9% of the state’s total population.
25. Arizona – 1.3 million individuals, or over 20% of the population, speak Spanish in Arizona.
26. Spanish is spoken by 1.34 million people in New Jersey or roughly 15.9% of the state’s total population.
27. Spanish is spoken by around 2.8 million individuals in New York or 15% of the city’s total population.
28. The estimated 1.6 million Spanish-speaking residents of Illinois represent 13.2% of the state’s overall population.
29. Colorado – Almost 600,000 people, or roughly 12% of the population, speak Spanish in Colorado.

Let’s have a deeper look into this.

30. All regulations are published in both Spanish and English in New Mexico and Puerto Rico. However, Spanish is the language that is spoken by the majority of the population.
31. In 43 US states and the District of Columbia, Spanish is the second most common language after English.
32. 55% of Americans who identify as Hispanic live in California, Texas, and Florida.
33. According to the US Hispanic Data Gallery, there are an estimated 18.2% of Spanish-speaking people in New York.
34. New Mexico is the state with the greatest percentage of people who speak Spanish in the US at 48%. 
35. The states with the fewest Spanish-speaking Americans are Vermont (1,6%), Maine (1.4%), and West Virginia (1.3%).

Spanish Varieties In The US

36. Like English, Spanish is not a single dialect but rather a language with many dialects. The Spanish colonists who traveled to the New World during the colonial era are most likely to blame for this diversity.
37. This makes American Spanish dialects a fantastic area for linguistic study. Linguists assert that a number of Spanish dialects share characteristics with the Spanish spoken in the 16th and 17th centuries.
38. It’s interesting to note that some Spanish dialects have even incorporated a small number of terms from various Native American languages.
39. It’s critical to emphasize that the Spanish colony 400 years ago should not be solely blamed for the emergence of the Spanish variants in the US.
40. The Spanish linguistic environment has been influenced by immigration from Spanish-speaking nations, including Cuba, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, and the Spanish diaspora that arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Future Of Spanish In The US

41. With more than 42 million speakers, Spanish is by far the most spoken non-English language in the US among people ages 5 and older.
42. The US Census Bureau estimated that by 2050 there would be 138 million Spanish speakers in the United States, which is a 31.82% increase in less than 30 years.
43. It is estimated that around 754 million people will speak Spanish worldwide.
44. With a 233% increase in speakers since 1980, when there were 11 million speakers of Spanish, Spanish is one of the languages with the most significant growth rates.
45. In 2020, the Cervantes Institute’s annual study found that 4.5 million more people continue to learn Spanish every year.
46. The majority of these Spanish speakers, according to the US Census Bureau, will be Hispanic. Additionally, they predicted that by 2020, 37.5 to 41 million Hispanics would speak Spanish.
47. By 2050, one in three Americans will speak Spanish, according to data and trends. Bilingual individuals who also speak English are included in this data.
48. Today, Spanish is spoken by 74% of all Hispanics who are five years old or older. The projection for 2020 is for that percentage to drop to almost two-thirds. In the 2000s, 78% of Hispanics reported speaking Spanish at home.

Related Read:

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• People Speak French
• People In Germany Speak English
• How Many People Speak English in Japan
• How Many People Speak German

Final Verdict: 57 million People Speak Spanish In The US

There is no official language in the US, despite the fact that English is the dominant language there. However, if there were, there would only be two languages: English and Spanish, and you can probably guess why after looking at the numbers above.

Numbers are one thing, but people’s daily lives also demonstrate how important Spanish is. Spanish is a language that plenty of kids and teenagers are learning in school. Newspapers and radio stations are available in Spanish.

Overall, it is rather obvious that Spanish is an important language in the US.

Hopefully, this article has provided you with an answer to your curiosity about the number of Spanish speakers in the United States.

We regularly update our articles with new data as this data keeps changing. Share your thoughts on this in our comment section below.

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