This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: K-12 data refers to 2007-2008 school year, higher education data refers to 2016 (are there more recent sources?). Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(May 2022)
The tables below provide a list of foreign languages most frequently taught in American schools and colleges. They reflect the popularity of these languages in terms of the total number of enrolled students in the United States. (Here, a foreign language means any language other than English, and includes American Sign Language.)
Below are the top foreign languages studied in public K-12 schools (i.e., primary and secondary schools). The tables correspond to the 18.5% (some 8.9 million) of all K-12 students in the U.S. (about 49 million) who take foreign-language classes.[1]
^"Others" includes (in order of quantity) Native American language, Korean, Filipino, Arabic, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Hebrew, Polish, Turkish, Swahili, Hindi.