How many people in Arizona speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 1.86M people age 5 and older in Arizona spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 4 Arizonans. Excluding English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in Arizona homes. About 73.9% of people speaking a non-English language spoke Spanish.
1.86M
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
73.9%
Spanish's share of non-English language speakers (2024)
More than half of all people in Arizona speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of three languages: Spanish, Navajo, or Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese).
Spanish is the most-spoken non-English language in Arizona homes, followed by Navajo 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 Arizona, 1.86 million people age 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, or 25.9% of the state’s population age 5 and older, compared with 23% nationally. This data determines bilingual election requirements under the Voting Rights Act and has also been used to allocate funds for students with lower English proficiency.
Based on data from 2024, Arizona's residents were more likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 2.2% of the US's 5+ population lived in Arizona, the state was home to 2.5% of the nation's non-English speakers — a sign that Arizona had a disproportionately larger share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Arizona were Navajo (51.8% of all US speakers), Other Native languages of North America (11.5%), and Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (4.7%).
In Arizona, the state had the biggest population of Navajo speakers in the US. About 70,691 Navajo speakers lived in Arizona, or 51.8% of the language's 136,580 US speakers.
Get weekly insights
Subscribe for data-driven insights. No spin, just the facts.
Navajo is the language for which Arizona 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 Arizona whose primary language at home is not English increased 0.2%. The number of people speaking Spanish — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Arizona — shrunk 1.5% during this period.
In Arizona, the number of people speaking Spanish at home shrunk 1.5% since 2018
Non-English language speakers ages 5 and older at home, by broad language group
Keep exploring
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.
