How many people in Alabama speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 313,100 people age 5 and older in Alabama spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 16 Alabamians. Excluding English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in Alabama homes. About 62.4% of people speaking a non-English language spoke Spanish.
313K
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
62.4%
Spanish's share of non-English language speakers (2024)
More than half of all people in Alabama speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of three languages: Spanish, Korean, or Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese).
Spanish is the most-spoken non-English language in Alabama homes, followed by Korean and Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese).
People aged 5 or older who speak a language other than English at home, by language group (2024)
The ACS asks people if they speak a language other than English at home, what that language is, and how well they speak English. In Alabama, 313,100 people ages 5 and older speak a language other than English at home, or 6.4% of the state’s population age 5 and older, compared with 23% nationally. Spanish is the most common non-English language, spoken by 195,300 people, and Alabama is home to speakers of 41 languages.
Based on data from 2024, Alabama's residents were less likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 1.5% of the US's 5+ population lived in Alabama, the state was home to 0.42% of the nation's non-English speakers — a sign that Alabama had a disproportionately smaller share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Alabama were Other and unspecified languages (2.1% of all US speakers), Korean (1.2%), and Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (1.2%).
In Alabama, no non-English language had its largest US-speaking population in the state. Other and unspecified languages was the language for which Alabama accounted for the largest share of US speakers, at 2.1%.
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Korean is the language for which Alabama makes up the largest share of US speakers
State share of national speakers by language, ages 5 and older (2024)
Population change
The US population gained 1.78 million people between 2024 and 2025.
Between 2018 and 2024, the number of people in Alabama whose primary language at home is not English increased 28.4%. The number of people speaking Spanish — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Alabama — grew 29.4% during this period.
In Alabama, the number of people speaking Spanish at home grew 29.4% since 2018
Non-English language speakers ages 5 and older at home, by broad language group
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Methodology
USAFacts standardizes data, in areas such as time and demographics, to make it easier to understand and compare.
Page sources
USAFacts endeavors to share the most up-to-date information available. We sourced the data on this page directly from government agencies; however, the intervals at which agencies publish updated data vary.
