What is the second largest language in the United States? Why?

[v0031]

What is the second largest language in the United States? Why?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Spanish. Because the US borders a large Spanish speaking country and has had much immigration from many other Spanish speaking countries in the same hemisphere.

[dead0man]

German was number 2 until WWI, when German culture was murdered in the US.

[TDAS04]

French used to be the most common second language learned by English-speaking Americans, before Spanish surpassed French in the 1970s (not that very many native-English-speakers in the US learn a second language at all).

[Cokeland Saxton]

Spanish. The US borders Mexico (the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country) and there are a large number of Mexican immigrants and their descendants living in the US. Also, there is the much smaller, but not insignificant groups of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans, etc.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Abdullah would've loved this thread.

According to the ACS, the most common languages spoken at home by people aged five years of age or older in the period from 2017 to 2021 were: [9]

• English – 245 million (78.5%)
• Spanish – 41.3 million (13.2%)
• Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien and all other varieties) – 3.40 million (1.1%)
• Tagalog (including Filipino) – 1.72 million (0.5%)
• Vietnamese – 1.52 million (0.5%)
• Arabic – 1.39 million
• French – 1.18 million
• Korean – 1.07 million
• Russian – 1.04 million
• Portuguese – 937 thousand
• Haitian Creole – 895 thousand
• Hindi – 865 thousand
• German – 857 thousand
• Polish – 533 thousand
• Italian – 513 thousand
• Urdu – 508 thousand
• Persian (including Farsi, Dari and Tajik) – 472 thousand
• Telugu – 460 thousand
• Japanese – 455 thousand
• Gujarati – 437 thousand
• Bengali – 403 thousand
• Tamil – 341 thousand
• Punjabi – 319 thousand
• Thais (including Central Thai and Lao) – 284 thousand
• Serbo-Croatian (including Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian) – 266 thousand
• Armenian – 256 thousand
• Greek – 253 thousand
• Hmong – 240 thousand
• Hebrew – 215 thousand
• Khmer – 193 thousand
• Navajo – 155 thousand

The ACS is not a full census but an annual sample-based survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The language statistics are based on responses to a three-part question asked about all members of a target U.S. household who are at least five years old. The first part asks if they "speak a language other than English at home." If so, the head of the household or main respondent is asked to report which language each member speaks in the home, and how well each individual speaks English. It does not ask how well individuals speak any other language of the household. Thus, some respondents might have only limited speaking ability in those languages.[12] In addition, it is difficult to make historical comparisons of the numbers of speakers because language questions used by the U.S. Census changed numerous times before 1980.[13]

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Spanish, and it isn't even close.  If the average white American can speak a second language, it's highly likely to be Spanish too because it's the most practical language to learn for almost all Americans (apart from maybe Northern Maine, people who live in an immigrant community, or who do specific business in specific countries).