Most Studied Foreign Languages in the U.S.

Updated August 5, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

It can be difficult to determine how often a particular subject is studied nationwide. The Modern Language Association, an important U.S. cultural institution, tracks enrollment in college-level language courses as a way to gauge how often people study different languages.

While Spanish and French continue to be the top two languages studied in the U.S, they decreased by an average of 10.5% between 2013 and 2016. Total enrollment declined by just over 9%. Among the top ten languages, only Japanese showed any growth in enrollment figures. The only other individual language to show substantial growth was Korean.

Language	Fall 2016 Enrollments	% Change from 2013	Fall 2013 enrollments	% Change from 2009	Fall 2009 enrollments	% Change from 2006	Fall 2006 enrollments
1. Spanish	712,240	-9.8	790,756	-8.2	864,986	5.1	822,985
2. French	175,667	-11.1	197,757	-8.1	216,419	4.8	206,426
3. American Sign Language	107,060	-2.3	109,577	19.0	96,349	2.2	94,264
4. German	80,594	-7.1	86,700	-9.3	91,763	16.4	78,829
5. Italian	56,743	-20.1	71,285	-11.3	80,752	3.0	78,368
6. Japanese	68,810	3.1	66,740	-7.8	73,434	10.3	66,605
7. Chinese	53,069	-13.1	61,055	2.0	60,976	18.2	51,582
8. Arabic	31,554	-5.9	32,286	-7.5	35,083	46.3	23,974
9. Latin	24,866	-8.6	27,192	-16.2	32,606	1.3	32,191
10. Russian	20,353	-7.4	21,962	-17.9	26,883	8.2	24,845