Most Studied Foreign Languages in the U.S.

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 2013and 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