16.2.5 Language Spoken

Table 16: Language Spoken Scoring

Characteristics	Score
English, Spanish, Other Language	+1
Detailed Language with Population 300,001 - 4,000,000 e.g., Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean	+2
Detailed Language with Population 100,001 - 300,000 e.g., Persian, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, French	+3
Detailed Language with Population 20,001 - 100,000 e.g., German, Portuguese, Hmong, Hebrew, Bengali, Polish	+5
Detailed Language with Population ≤20,000 e.g., Haitian, Navajo	+7

Language spoken is captured in a variety of data systems to support individuals in receiving services in the language they speak. Language Spoken is not collected as part of the decennial Census, so the following estimates of language spoken at home are used to assess the population sizes of various languages. These estimates of language spoken are taken from the 2017-2021 5-year American Community Survey (ACS). These Statewide population estimates of language spoken along with Table 2 are used to determine the groupings for the scoring above.

Table 17: California Population Estimates by Language Spoken

Language Spoken at Home for the Population 5 years and older	California Estimate	Margin of Error
Total	37,105,018	±669
Speak only English	20,833,290	±49,117
Spanish	10,514,821	±34,689
Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese)	1,259,668	±13,770
Tagalog (incl. Filipino)	780,024	±10,075
Vietnamese	556,398	±8,380
Korean	358,018	±7,365
Persian (incl. Farsi, Dari)	211,089	±6,309
Hindi	203,238	±6,535
Arabic	198,914	±7,807
Armenian	195,413	±5,581
Russian	170,508	±4,817
Punjabi	142,450	±6,035
Japanese	136,009	±4,890
French (incl. Cajun)	126,338	±4,041
Ilocano, Samoan, Hawaiian, or other Austronesian languages (aggregated group)	120,223	±4,014
German	93,471	±2,737
Portuguese	91,042	±3,852
Thai, Lao, or other Tai-Kadai languages (aggregated group)	75,646	±3,518
Other Indo-European languages (aggregated group)	75,233	±3,511
Hmong	74,317	±3,670
Telugu	67,956	±3,101
Khmer	67,756	±3,552
Other languages of Asia (aggregated group)	65,969	±3,512
Amharic, Somali, or other Afro-Asiatic languages (aggregated group)	63,318	±3,433
Tamil	60,594	±2,885
Nepali, Marathi, or other Indic languages (aggregated group)	58,552	±2,832
Urdu	54,569	±2,938
Italian	53,954	±2,128
Gujarati	51,662	±2,772
Hebrew	44,540	±2,542
Ukrainian or other Slavic languages (aggregated group)	41,606	±2,630
Malayalam, Kannada, or other Dravidian languages (aggregated group)	37,709	±2,672
Yoruba, Twi, Igbo, or other languages of Western Africa (aggregated group)	34,305	±2,830
Bengali	30,223	±2,043
Yiddish, Pennsylvania Dutch or other West Germanic languages (aggregated group)	26,359	±1,870
Polish	21,304	±1,639
Serbo-Croatian	20,022	±1,470
Greek	19,783	±1,576
Swahili or other languages of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (aggregated group)	16,547	±1,558
Haitian	7,878	±1,071
Other Native languages of North America (aggregated group)	5,841	±713
Navajo	1,043	±305
Other and unspecified languages	37,418	±2,389

Based on the above numbers, the majority of individuals speak English or Spanish. Therefore, if the table includes “English”, “Spanish”, and “Other Language” as the categories for “Language Spoken”, then the score is +1 which is comparable to reporting Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity as a “Yes or No”.

As noted for Race and Ethnicity demographics, language spoken demographics may vary significantly based on geography as well as based on particular conditions. So although the scoring criteria presents a guideline for assessing risk, the population frequencies for the specific geography and/or condition should also be taken into account.

If more specificity for Language Spoken is being requested with respect to reporting on the other languages in the table above, the request will need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The additional review is necessary given the variability of language spoken by different populations or geographies and the consideration for potential increased risk of identification.