How many people in Nebraska speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 263,500 people age 5 and older in Nebraska spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 7 Nebraskans. Excluding English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in Nebraska homes. About 66.4% of people speaking a non-English language spoke Spanish.
264K
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
66.4%
Spanish's share of non-English language speakers (2024)
More than half of all people in Nebraska speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of three languages: Spanish, French (incl. Cajun), or Arabic.
Spanish is the most-spoken non-English language in Nebraska homes, followed by French (incl. Cajun) and Arabic.
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 Nebraska, 263,500 people ages 5 and older, or 14%, spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, compared with 23% nationwide. Spanish was the most common, spoken by 174,900 people, or 66.4% of non-English speakers, followed by French (incl. Cajun) at 8,100 and Arabic at 7,800. Nebraska had 39 languages spoken at home.
Based on data from 2024, Nebraska's residents were less likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 0.59% of the US's 5+ population lived in Nebraska, the state was home to 0.36% of the nation's non-English speakers — a sign that Nebraska had a disproportionately smaller share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Nebraska were Other languages of Asia (1.4% of all US speakers), Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (0.9%), and Nepali, Marathi, or other Indic languages (0.8%).
In Nebraska, no non-English language had its largest US-speaking population in the state. Other languages of Asia was the language for which Nebraska accounted for the largest share of US speakers, at 1.4%.
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Other languages of Asia is the language for which Nebraska 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 Nebraska whose primary language at home is not English increased 30.7%. The number of people speaking Spanish — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Nebraska — grew 34.9% during this period.
In Nebraska, the number of people speaking Spanish at home grew 34.9% 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.
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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.
