Languages of the United States

English is the de facto national language (language used in common practice) of the United States, with 82% of the population claiming it as a mother tongue, and some 96% claiming to speak it "well" or "very well".^[1] However, no official language is recognized by the whole federal government. On March 1, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that declared English to be the official language of the U.S.,^[2] but the order is limited to the executive branch.^[3] The Constitution of the United States does not set an official language.^[4] There have been several proposals to make English the de jure national language in amendments to immigration reform bills,^[5][6] but none of these bills have made a federal language. This means that, while the federal government uses English, there is no law that they have to. However, some states have adopted English as their official language.

On the other hand, a lot of other languages, like Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Polish, Finnish, Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Hindi, Mandarin, Hebrew, Cantonese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Ukrainian, Navajo, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Portuguese, etc. are spoken in the United States as second languages.