How many people in Maine speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 85,500 people age 5 and older in Maine spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 16 Mainers. Excluding English, French (incl. Cajun) is the most common language spoken in Maine homes. About 36% of people speaking a non-English language spoke French (incl. Cajun).
85.5K
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
36.0%
French (incl. Cajun)'s share of non-English language speakers (2020–2024)
More than half of all people in Maine speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of three languages: French (incl. Cajun), Spanish, or German.
French (incl. Cajun) is the most-spoken non-English language in Maine homes, followed by Spanish and German.
People aged 5 or older who speak a language other than English at home, by language group (2020-2024)
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 Maine, 85,500 residents ages 5 and older spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, or 6.3% of the state’s 1.35 million people ages 5 and older, compared with 23% nationally. French (including Cajun) was the most common non-English language, spoken by 30,700 people, followed by Spanish (13,100) and German (3,200). 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, Maine's residents were less likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 0.42% of the US's 5+ population lived in Maine, the state was home to 0.12% of the nation's non-English speakers — a sign that Maine had a disproportionately smaller share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Maine were French (incl. Cajun) (2.5% of all US speakers), Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (0.6%), and Other Native languages of North America (0.6%).
In Maine, no non-English language had its largest US-speaking population in the state. French (incl. Cajun) was the language for which Maine accounted for the largest share of US speakers, at 2.5%.
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French (incl. Cajun) is the language for which Maine 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 Maine whose primary language at home is not English increased 9.6%. The number of people speaking other Indo-European languages — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Maine — grew 4.4% during this period.
In Maine, the number of people speaking Other Indo-European languages at home grew 4.4% 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.
