Census Bureau: Arabic and Urdu Fastest-Growing Languages in US

A record 63.2 million U.S. residents – or more than one in five Americans – now speak a language other than English at home – with the two biggest spikes in speakers of Arabic and Urdu, Census figures show.

Census data from the American Community Survey show from 2010 to 2014, speakers of Arabic jumped 29 percent, Urdu was up 23 percent, Hindi rose 19 percent, Chinese and Hmong both were up 12 percent and Gujarati and Persian increased 9 percent, the Center for Immigration Studies reports.

Urdu is Pakistan's national language; Hindi and Guajarati are languages of India; Hmong is spoken in Laos; and Persian is spoken in Iran, CIS notes.

The data shows 41 percent of U.S. residents – or 25.6 million– have difficulty speaking English.

Other findings were that:

• the largest numerical increases were among Spanish speakers, up 2.3 million, Chinese, up 331,000, Arabic, up 252,000, Tagalog – spoken in the Philippines – up 115,000, Hindi, up 114,000, and Urdu, up 89,000;
• languages with more than a million speakers in 2014 were Spanish, with 39. 3 million, Chinese, with 3.1 million, Tagalog, with 1.7 million, Vietnamese, with 1.5 million, French, with 1.2 million, and Korean and Arabic, with 1.1 million each;
• and of the more than 63 million foreign language speakers, 44 percent, or 27.7 million, were born in the United States.

Breitbart News reports the findings by CIS, a critic of immigration, coincide with others showing Muslim immigration is the fastest growing bloc of new immigrants.

"Immigration is not just an economic issue," Steve Camarota of CIS tells Breitbart News. "English as our common language is part of the glue that holds our country together. These numbers suggest that the levels of immigration are so high that it may strain that."

Camarota warned with "no pause in immigration levels in sight, the nation is headed into uncharted territory."

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump has made speaking English in America an issue in his campaign, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have both spoken Spanish on the stump.

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