county by language spoken at home@2x
As people sit down for dinner in Milpitas, two out of three of them are speaking something other than English when they ask for seconds.
No other city in the Bay Area has such a high percentage of residents who come home and share the highlights and struggles of their day in another language.
That’s according to a new round of data released Thursday from the U.S Census Bureau’s American Community Survey on the country’s households.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, California is the state with the largest proportion of people who speak a language other than English at home — 44% of all residents 5 and older. Texas comes in second with 35%.
In the Bay Area, the percentage is 43%, twice the national rate. In eight Bay Area cities, more than half of the residents speak another language at home, according to the estimates, based on survey responses over five years from 2018 to 2022.
Nowhere stood out more than the South Bay city of Milpitas, where 45% of residents 5 and older speak an Asian or Pacific Island language, such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean or Tagalog, and 9% speak Spanish.
Fremont, Daly City, Hayward and San Jose round out the five Bay Area cities with the most speakers of other languages. Fremont has the most who speak Indo-European languages at home, including Hindi. Richmond tops the Bay Area in residents who speak Spanish at home.
The city in the survey with the largest percentage of people who speak English at home? Livermore, where three out four residents said they speak only English at home.
The data, released with hyperlocal detail from the American Community Survey this week, is the “nation’s most current, reliable, and accessible data source for local statistics on critical planning topics such as age, children, veterans, commuting, education, income, and employment,” from the U.S. Census Bureau.
For comparison, the 9-county Bay Area as a whole has a slight majority of people who speak English at home, 57%. Spanish is the second most common with 16%, and 18% of residents speak a mix of Asian or Pacific Island languages. Other Indo-European languages, including Hindi and languages like French and Farsi, are spoken by 7% of residents. Just over 1% of people speak other languages, including Arabic, one of the fastest growing languages in the Bay Area.
The new data provides another piece of the puzzle that reveals the constantly evolving demographics of the Bay Area: It is aging quickly, and Asians are now the largest racial group. Those are among other recent notable changes, like the fact that there are now more Indian than Mexican immigrants in Alameda and Santa Clara counties.
Check back for more on this developing story.
Originally published at Harriet Blair Rowan