United States of America - Language

Although the United States has no official language, English is the de facto national language. In 2003, about 214.8 million, or 81.6%, of the population aged five years and older spoke only English at home. Although not all Americans speak English, it is the most common language for daily interaction among both native and non-native speakers. Knowledge of English is required of immigrants seeking naturalization. Some Americans advocate making English the official language, which it is in twenty-seven individual states. Three states also grant official status to other languages alongside English: French in Louisiana, Hawaiian in Hawaii, and Spanish in New Mexico. Besides English, languages spoken at home by at least one million Americans aged five years and up are Spanish or Spanish Creole, spoken by 29.7 million; Chinese, 2.2 million; French (including Patois and Cajun), 1.4 million; Tagalog, 1.3 million; Vietnamese, 1.1 million; and German, 1.1 million.

If you found this interesting and would like to read more about the United States of America, please click here to select the next section in this series on the United States of America. If you are not interested, please use the link below. It will return you to our Reading Selections II page. Please take a look there and see if you can find other reading there that interests you. If not, we suggest you venture out on the Internet and find something that does interest you.

This page is a modified section of an article at Wikipedia. Click here to read the original article at Wikipedia about the United States of America. According to the Wikipedia leftright, this modified section can be used or modified as long as there are links provided to both Wikipedia and Aaron Language Services.