Language Spoken at Home
How the Census categorizes language use and what the site’s language groups include
The site’s language groups and the Census 42-group classification
The district, neighborhood, and citywide tables use ACS table C16001. C16001 is a collapsed table with 12 non-English language categories, plus “Speak English Only.” It is not the Census Bureau’s 42-group classification.
The crosswalk below shows which Census 42-group categories are combined into each site/C16001 category. The language names are the Census Bureau’s published examples, not an exhaustive list of every language or coding value in the underlying ACS language system.
| Site/C16001 category | Census 42-group categories combined here | Census examples |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Spanish | Spanish; Ladino |
| French, Haitian, or Cajun | French (including Cajun); Haitian | French; Cajun; Haitian |
| German or Other West Germanic | German; Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch, or other West Germanic languages | German; Luxembourgish; Dutch; Yiddish |
| Russian, Polish, or Other Slavic | Russian; Polish; Serbo-Croatian; Ukrainian or other Slavic languages | Russian; Polish; Bosnian; Croatian; Serbian; Bulgarian; Czech; Ukrainian |
| Other Indo-European | Italian; Portuguese; Greek; Armenian; Persian; Gujarati; Hindi; Urdu; Punjabi; Bengali; Nepali, Marathi, or other Indic languages; Other Indo-European languages | Italian; Sicilian; Portuguese; Kabuverdianu; Greek; Armenian; Iranian Persian (Farsi); Dari; Gujarati; Hindi; Urdu; Punjabi (Panjabi); Bengali; Nepali; Marathi; Konkani; Albanian; Lithuanian; Pashto (Pushto); Romanian; Swedish |
| Korean | Korean | Korean |
| Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese) | Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese) | Mandarin Chinese; Min Nan Chinese (including Taiwanese); Yue Chinese (Cantonese) |
| Vietnamese | Vietnamese | Vietnamese |
| Tagalog (incl. Filipino) | Tagalog (including Filipino) | Tagalog; Filipino |
| Other Asian and Pacific Island | Telugu; Tamil; Malayalam, Kannada, or other Dravidian languages; Japanese; Hmong; Khmer; Thai, Lao, or other Tai-Kadai languages; Other languages of Asia; Ilocano, Samoan, Hawaiian, or other Austronesian languages | Telugu; Tamil; Malayalam; Kannada; Japanese; Hmong; Central Khmer (Cambodian); Thai; Lao; Burmese; Karen; Turkish; Uzbek; Cebuano (Bisayan); Hawaiian; Iloko (Ilocano); Indonesian; Samoan |
| Arabic | Arabic | Arabic languages |
| Other Languages (site; C16001 “Other and unspecified languages”) | Navajo; Other Native languages of North America; Hebrew; Amharic, Somali, or other Afro-Asiatic languages; Yoruba, Twi, Igbo, or other languages of Western Africa; Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa; Other and unspecified languages | Navajo; Apache languages; Cherokee; Lakota; Tohono O’odham; Yupik languages; Hebrew; Amharic; Chaldean Neo-Aramaic; Somali; Tigrinya; Akan (including Twi); Igbo (Ibo); Wolof; Yoruba; Ganda; Kinyarwanda; Lingala; Swahili; Hungarian; Jamaican Creole English; unspecified |
This mapping contains all 42 Census categories: the site combines 1 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 12 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 7 categories across its 12 non-English rows. The Census Bureau’s “Four and Forty-Two Group Classifications” table is the authoritative source for this grouping.
What is the “Other Languages” row on district pages?
The “Other Languages” row on district pages combines two things:
Languages not enumerated above — the Census Bureau groups write-in responses that do not fit a named category into an “other and unspecified languages” bucket. Languages like Amharic, Somali, Yoruba, Hebrew, and many Indigenous languages fall here and are not separately reported in C16001.
Named language groups below 1% — any of the 11 named groups in the table above that are spoken at home by less than 1% of a district’s population are also folded into “Other Languages”.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS table C16001; About Language Use in the U.S. Population (official Four and Forty-Two Group Classification); 2016 ACS Language User Note (C16001/B16001 table design); ACS Language Code List (underlying language codes).