Navajo is Arizona's third most popular language
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Navajo is the most commonly spoken language at home in Arizona after English and Spanish, per new census data.
Why it matters: The myriad languages spoken nationwide reflect both the settlement and colonization of centuries long past, as well as more modern immigration patterns.
- While Spanish is far and away the predominant non-English language nationwide, with about 41.2 million speakers, putting it aside offers insight into other groups and population centers around the country.
By the numbers: Nearly 81,000 Arizonans speak Navajo at home.
- The next most common languages here are Vietnamese, with more than 21,000 speakers, followed by Arabic with nearly 20,400 and Chinese with almost 20,000.
- That's for languages spoken at home during the 2017-2021 period among people five years and older.
Context: The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American tribe in the U.S. It extends into New Mexico and Utah, but the majority of the tribe is in Arizona.
- Arizona is one of four states where Native American and Indigenous languages are the most popular non-English or Spanish language.
Zoom out: Chinese, Tagalog and Vietnamese are the three most commonly spoken languages in the U.S. other than English and Spanish.
Between the lines: Many multilingual people speak one language at home with family, but use English at work, school and elsewhere.
- Just over 60% of people who speak a language other than English at home also say they speak English "very well," per the census data.