Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole are the top five home languages for English-language learners in the nation’s K-12 public schools, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Education.
From 2012 to 2014, more than 80 percent of the nation’s English-learners were native speakers of one of those languages, but there was lots of linguistic diversity among the nation’s English-learners: 44 languages were represented among the individual states’ top five most commonly spoken languages during the 2013-14 school year, the report found.
All but five states reported Spanish as the most common language for English-learners. Those five states, along with the most common languages in each, were: Alaska (Yup’ik languages); Hawaii (Iloko); Maine (Somali); Montana (German); and Vermont (Nepali).
