More than half of Santa Clara County’s residents over age 5 speak a language other than English at home, a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau says.
Of the 1,688,748 county residents in the survey, 864,858, or 51 percent, spoke another language at home. Most frequently spoken were Spanish (19 percent of total residents), any Chinese language (7.5 percent) and Vietnamese (6.6 percent).
The survey included languages spoken at home by only dozens of residents, including Yiddish (93 people), Bantu (35) and Navajo (28).
Twenty-one percent of all Santa Clara County residents — about 360,000 people — speak English “less than very well,” the survey said.
In the state as a whole, 44 percent of California residents over the age of 5 speak a language other than English at home. Of those, two-thirds — 29 percent of total residents — speak Spanish.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the study, covering the years 2009-2013, also found that among the largest metropolitan areas, the Los Angeles region featured the nation’s second highest number of languages spoken, 185. The New York area is first, with 192 languages.
In the L.A. region, 54 percent of residents over the age of five speak some language other than English at home.
