"Vietnamese is the third most commonly spoken language in Texas."
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Texas Sen. John Cornyn shakes hands with Joey Cruz, a Marine veteran, at a Memorial Day 2016 event in Bastrop. Cornyn was right about Vietnamese being the third-most spoken language in Texas (Photo, Fran Hunter, Bastrop Advertiser)
John Cornyn says Vietnamese third most common language spoken in Texas
John Cornyn recently stressed that Communist Vietnam, visited by President Barack Obama, needs to improve its human rights record.
Cornyn opened his Senate floor remarks, though, by calling Vietnamese residents of his home state of Texas "some of the most accomplished people." The second-term Republican added: "Many are surprised when I tell them that Vietnamese is the third most commonly spoken language in Texas."
English is most-spoken, Cornyn told his colleagues, with Spanish ranking No. 2.
Makes sense. But we wondered about his Vietnamese language claim.
By email, Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie told us Cornyn reached his conclusion based on U.S. Census bureau charts on languages spoken at home posted in October 2015. By far, according to the bureau’s 2009-2013 American Community Survey, English and Spanish were most-spoken at home in Texas--and Vietnamese placed a distant third, .
Brandewie also noted news accounts that cited the bureau data including a November 2015 Texas Tribune story. A chart with the Tribune story presents the state’s most-spoken languages other than English under this summary: "Of the nearly 24 million people in Texas five years or older, 65 percent speak only English at home. The rest speak more than 160 languages combined."
Top 10 languages other than English spoken in Texas households
Language
Number of Speakers
Spanish
6,983,380
Vietnamese
193,408
Chinese*
140,971
Tagalog
72,248
German
69,140
French
Featured Fact-check
60,730
Hindi
59,602
Urdu
57,662
Korean
55,794
Arabic
55,304
*Includes Cantonese, Mandarin other Chinese languages
SOURCES: News story, " As Texas Grows, More Languages are Spoken at Home," Texas Tribune, Nov. 26, 2015, chart citing 2009-2013 American Community Survey.
Some 164 languages are lately spoken in Texas, the story said. Significantly, it said, changing "immigration patterns are increasing the number of other foreign languages spoken in Texas households, from Vietnamese and Chinese to Tagalog, the language spoken in the Philippines."
2014 census data
Seeking the latest available data, we reached out to bureau spokesman Robert Bernstein who emailed us a breakdown drawing on results from the 2014 one-year ACS indicating that some 201,997 Texas residents age 5 or older speak Vietnamese at home. That count trailed only the 2014 survey’s tally of English-only speakers in Texas (16,126,855) and Spanish speakers (7,465,279).
Some perspective; 65 percent of the estimated 25 million Texans age 5 or older speak only English at home, according to the survey, and 30 percent speak Spanish--while only 0.81 percent speak Vietnamese. That is, there’s a big dropoff from second to third place.
Bernstein also provided national results on languages spoken at home. According to the 2014 ACS, 79 percent of the 299 million U.S. residents 5 or older speak only English, 13 percent speak Spanish and, in third place, about 5.5 percent speak French. Next, per the survey, 1 percent of residents speak Chinese at home with 0.5 percent, nearly 1.5 million residents, speaking Vietnamese.
Longer view
We also heard back from Lloyd Potter, the state demographer, who noted by email that according to the ACS covering 2010-2014, English, Spanish and Vietnamese were the three most-spoken languages in Texas. Those were followed, the five-year results suggest, by Chinese, other Asian languages, African languages, Tagalog, German, French and Urdu.
Our ruling
Cornyn said Vietnamese is the third-most-spoken language in Texas.
Survey data supports this claim though English or Spanish is spoken by far more residents.
We rate the claim True.
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.
https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/6c1cadb7-066f-4ab9-9e61-00a254d1ed01
Our Sources
Email, Drew Brandewie, communications director, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, May 25, 2016
Charts, "Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over: 2009-2013," and charts for each state, American Community Survey 2009-13, U.S. Census Bureau, October 2015
News story, " As Texas Grows, More Languages are Spoken at Home," Texas Tribune, Nov. 26, 2015
Charts, "Texas: LANGUAGE SPOKEN AT HOME BY ABILITY TO SPEAK ENGLISH FOR THE POPULATION 5 YEARS AND OVER," "U.S. and Texas, LANGUAGE SPOKEN AT HOME BY ABILITY TO SPEAK ENGLISH FOR THE POPULATION 5 YEARS AND OVER," 2014 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates (received by email from Robert Bernstein, public affairs specialist, Media Relations, Public Information Office, U.S. Census Bureau, May 25, 2016)
Email, Lloyd Potter, Texas state demographer, May 25, 2016
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John Cornyn says Vietnamese third most common language spoken in Texas
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