List of most commonly learned foreign languages in the United States

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The tables below provide a list of foreign languages most frequently taught in American schools and colleges. They reflect the popularity of these languages in terms of the total number of enrolled students in the United States. (Here, a foreign language means any language other than English, and includes American Sign Language.)

Lists

Below are the top foreign languages studied in public K-12 schools (i.e., primary and secondary schools). The tables correspond to the 18.5% (some 8.9 million) of all K-12 students in the U.S. (about 49 million) who take foreign-language classes.^[1]

K-12

K-12 students (2007-2008)
Rank	Language	Enrollments	Percentage
1	Spanish	6,418,331	72.06%
2	French	1,254,243	14.08%
3	German	395,019	4.43%
4	Latin	205,158	2.30%
5	Japanese	72,845	0.82%
6	Italian	65,058	0.73%
7	Chinese	59,860	0.67%
8	American Sign Language	41,579	0.46%
	Others^[2]	255,825	2.87%
	Total	8,907,201	100%

Colleges and universities

Below are the top foreign languages studied in American institutions of higher education (i.e., colleges and universities), based on fall 2013 enrollments.^[3]

College & university students (2013)
Rank	Language	Enrollments	Percentage
1	Spanish	790,756	50.6%
2	French	197,757	12.7%
3	American Sign Language	109,577	7.0%
4	German	86,700	5.5%
5	Italian	71,285	4.6%
6	Japanese	66,740	4.3%
7	Chinese	61,055	3.9%
8	Arabic	32,286	2.1%
9	Latin	27,192	1.7%
10	Russian	21,962	1.4%
11	Greek, Ancient	12,917	0.8%
12	Hebrew, Biblical	12,551	0.8%
13	Portuguese	12,415	0.8%
14	Korean	12,229	0.8%
15	Hebrew, Modern	6,698	0.4%
	Others	40,059	2.6%
	Total	1,562,179	100%

List of top five most commonly learned languages by year

Grades K-12

Year	Languages										Source
Year	1	%	2	%	3	%	4	%	5	%	Source
2004-2005	Spanish	72.9	French	15.0	German	4.2	Latin	2.6	Japanese	0.7	^[1]
2007-2008	Spanish	72.1	French	14.1	German	4.4	Latin	2.3	Japanese	0.8	^[1]

Higher education

Year	Languages										Source
Year	1	%	2	%	3	%	4	%	5	%	Source
1960	French	37.9	Spanish	29.7	German	24.2	Russian	5.1	Italian	1.8	^[3]
1968	French	34.4	Spanish	32.3	German	19.2	Russian	3.7	Latin	3.0
1980	Spanish	41.0	French	26.9	German	13.7	Italian	3.8	Latin	2.7
1990	Spanish	45.1	French	23.0	German	11.3	Italian	4.2	Japanese	3.9
1995	Spanish	53.2	French	18.0	German	8.5	Japanese	3.9	Italian	3.8
1998	Spanish	55.6	French	17.0	German	7.6	Italian	4.2	Japanese	3.7
2002	Spanish	53.4	French	14.5	German	6.5	Italian	4.6	American Sign	4.4
2006	Spanish	52.2	French	13.1	German	6.0	American Sign	5.1	Italian	5.0
2009	Spanish	51.4	French	12.9	German	5.7	American Sign	5.5	Italian	4.8
2013	Spanish	50.6	French	12.7	American Sign	7.0	German	5.5	Italian	4.6

References

1 2 3 "Foreign Language Enrollments in K–12 Public Schools" (PDF). American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). February 2011. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
↑ "Others" includes (in order of quantity) Native languages, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, Polish, Swahili, Turkish.
1 2 Goldberg, David; Looney, Dennis; Lusin, Natalia (February 2015). "Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Fall 2013" (PDF). Modern Language Association. Retrieved May 20, 2015.

External links

Language education

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Teaching techniques	Mother tongue mirroring Sandwich technique Back-chaining Dictogloss Information gap

Key concepts	Bilingual dictionary Critical period hypothesis English as a lingua franca Fossilization Interlanguage Language transfer Second-language acquisition World Englishes

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Programs and organizations	English as a second or foreign language English for specific purposes TESOL

Key people	Betty Azar H. Douglas Brown Pit Corder Jim Cummins Rod Ellis Stephen Krashen Scott Thornbury

Statistics	List of countries where English is an official language List of countries by English-speaking population Most commonly learned foreign languages in the U.S. EF English Proficiency Index

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