I've been seeing shared around on social media, and I thought it was pretty interesting... Do you know what is the most commonly spoken language in the United States, other than English? Yes, it's overwhelmingly Spanish. But what is the most commonly spoken language other than English and Spanish?
Behold, a Slate map of the United States depicting the Most Commonly Spoken Language Other than English or Spanish, broken down by state, created with data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The geography of some of the languages represented might surprise you.
It's important to highlight this note from Slate:
One of the most interesting data sets for aspiring mapmakers is the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Among other things, that survey includes a detailed look at the languages spoken in American homes. All the maps below are based on the responses to this survey. For instance, Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese dialects are separated as different responses in the data and were treated as different languages when constructing these maps. If those languages had been grouped together, the marking of many states would change. In addition, Hawaiian is listed as a Pacific Island language, so following the ACS classifications, it was not included in the Native American languages map. The spelling of each language is based on the language the ACS.
See more language maps here.
UPDATE: But wait.
Turns out, this map is not all that it's cracked up to be. For those with some questions about it, this blog post on AAPI Voices digs much deeper, and points out some problems with the Slate map: Slate, you’re doing it wrong
