How many people in Pennsylvania speak a language other than English at home?
Refreshed annually
In 2024, about 1.63M people age 5 and older in Pennsylvania spoke a language other than English at home. That's about one in 8 Pennsylvanians. Excluding English, Spanish is the most common language spoken in Pennsylvania homes. About 45.5% of people speaking a non-English language spoke Spanish.
1.63M
people speak a language other than English at home (2024)
45.5%
Spanish's share of non-English language speakers (2024)
More than half of all people in Pennsylvania speaking a non-English language at home spoke one of three languages: Spanish, Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese), or Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch or other West Germanic languages.
Spanish is the most-spoken non-English language in Pennsylvania homes, followed by Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese) and Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch or other West Germanic languages.
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 Pennsylvania, 1.63 million people age 5 and older, or 13.1%, spoke a language other than English at home in 2024, compared with 23% nationally. Spanish was the most common non-English language, with 740,600 speakers. 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, Pennsylvania's residents were less likely to speak a non-English language at home than the population nationwide. While about 3.9% of the US's 5+ population lived in Pennsylvania, the state was home to 2.2% of the nation's non-English speakers — a sign that Pennsylvania had a disproportionately smaller share of non-English households.
The non-English languages most concentrated in Pennsylvania were Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch or other West Germanic languages (11.6% of all US speakers), Nepali, Marathi, or other Indic languages (6.3%), and Malayalam, Kannada, or other Dravidian languages (5.6%).
In Pennsylvania, no non-English language had its largest US-speaking population in the state. Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch or other West Germanic languages was the language for which Pennsylvania accounted for the largest share of US speakers, at 11.6%.
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Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch or other West Germanic languages is the language for which Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania whose primary language at home is not English increased 12.5%. The number of people speaking Spanish — the largest of the Census Bureau's four broad language categories in Pennsylvania — grew 16.9% during this period.
In Pennsylvania, the number of people speaking Spanish at home grew 16.9% 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.
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.
