December is National Learn a Foreign Language Month

Profile America — Among other special observances being noted in December is Learn a Foreign Language Month, with the goal of getting people to broaden their outlook on the world by taking a course in another language. Increasingly, many different languages are heard across the nation. In the U.S., nearly 61 million people over age 5, or 21 percent, speak a language other than English at home. The leading non-English language is, unsurprisingly, Spanish at over 34 million. It’s a long drop to second place, held by the several Chinese variants at nearly 2.5 million. Other languages spoken in over 1 million households each are Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and German. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy from the American Community Survey at www.census.gov.

Sources:
http://www.programminglibrarian.org/library/events-and-celebrations/learn-a-foreign-language-month.html#.Unw2vyiVdW4
http://blogs.census.gov/2013/08/06/what-languages-are-spoken-in-your-area/
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/about/STP224.xls