Brooklyn has a high degree of
linguistic diversity. As of 2010, 54.1% (1,240,416) of Brooklyn residents ages 5 and older spoke
English at home as a
primary language, while 17.2% (393,340) spoke
Spanish, 6.5% (148,012)
Chinese, 5.3% (121,607)
Russian, 3.5% (79,469)
Yiddish, 2.8% (63,019)
French Creole, 1.4% (31,004)
Italian, 1.2% (27,440)
Hebrew, 1.0% (23,207)
Polish, 1.0% (22,763)
French, 1.0% (21,773)
Arabic, 0.9% (19,388)
various Indic languages, 0.7% (15,936)
Urdu, and
African languages were spoken as a
main language by 0.5% (12,305) of the population over the age of five. In total, 45.9% (1,051,456) of Brooklyn's population ages 5 and older spoke a
mother tongue other than English.
