How many people in Illinois speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 2.95M people age 5 and older in Illinois spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 4 Illinoisans. Excluding English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in Illinois homes. About 57.7% of people speaking a non-English language spoke Spanish.
2.95M
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
57.7%
Spanish's share of non-English language speakers (2024)
More than half of all people in Illinois speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of 3 languages: Spanish, Polish, or Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese).
Spanish is the most-spoken non-English language in Illinois homes, followed by Polish 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. 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, Illinois’s residents were more likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 3.7% of the US’s 5+ population lived in Illinois, the state was home to 4% of the nation’s non-English speakers — a sign that Illinois had a disproportionately larger share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Illinois were Polish (31.0% of all US speakers), Ukrainian or other Slavic languages (12.4%), and Serbo-Croatian (10.9%).
In Illinois, the state had the biggest population of speakers of 2 non-English languages, including Polish (157649 residents or 31.0% of US speakers), and Serbo-Croatian (28051 or 10.9%).
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Polish is the language for which Illinois 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 Illinois whose primary language at home is not English increased 5.0%. The number of people speaking Spanish — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Illinois — grew 3.8% during this period.
In Illinois, the number of people speaking Spanish at home grew 3.8% 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.
