The tables below provide a list of second 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.
Below are the top second 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.
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 | Chinese | 59,860 | 0.67% |
7 | Russian | 12,389 | 0.14% |
Others | 489,356 | 5.49% | |
Total | 8,907,201 | 100% |
Below are the top foreign languages studied in American institutions of higher education (i.e., colleges and universities), based on fall 2016 enrollments.
Rank | Language | Enrollments |
---|---|---|
1 | Spanish | 584,453 |
2 | French | 135,088 |
3 | American Sign Language | 107,899 |
4 | Japanese | 65,661 |
5 | German | 53,543 |
6 | Chinese | 46,492 |
7 | Italian | 45,182 |
8 | Arabic | 22,918 |
9 | Latin | 19,472 |
10 | Korean | 19,270 |
11 | Russian | 17,598 |
12 | Greek, Ancient | 11,433 |
13 | Hebrew, Biblical | 10,442 |
14 | Portuguese | 7,684 |
15 | Hebrew, Modern | 4,125 |
Others | 31,302 | |
Total | 1,182,562 |
Year | Languages | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | % | 2 | % | 3 | % | 4 | % | 5 | % | ||
2004–2005 | Spanish | 72.9 | French | 15.0 | German | 4.2 | Latin | 2.6 | Japanese | 0.7 | |
2007–2008 | Spanish | 72.1 | French | 14.1 | German | 4.4 | Latin | 2.3 | Japanese | 0.8 |
Year | Languages | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||||||
1960 | French | Spanish | German | Russian | Italian | |||||
1968 | French | Spanish | German | Russian | Latin | |||||
1980 | Spanish | French | German | Italian | Latin | |||||
1990 | Spanish | French | German | Italian | Japanese | |||||
1995 | Spanish | French | German | Japanese | Italian | |||||
1998 | Spanish | French | German | Italian | Japanese | |||||
2002 | Spanish | French | German | Italian | American Sign | |||||
2006 | Spanish | French | German | American Sign | Italian | |||||
2009 | Spanish | French | German | American Sign | Italian | |||||
2013 | Spanish | French | American Sign | German | Italian | |||||
2016 | Spanish | French | American Sign | German | Japanese | |||||
2021 | Spanish | French | American Sign | Japanese | German |
4. Lusin, Natalia, Peterson, Terri, Sulewski, Christine, Zafer, Rizwana (2023) https://www.mla.org/content/download/191324/file/Enrollments-in-Languages-Other-Than-English-in-US-Institutions-of-Higher-Education-Fall-2021.pdf. Modern Language Association. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article List of most commonly learned second languages in the United States, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.