West Virginia

Legal Status of official English in West Virginia

On March 5, 2016, West Virginia became the 32nd state to adopt an official English law.  The law passed by overwhelming margins of 95-4 in the West Virginia State House and 26-7 in the West Virginia State Senate, and was signed into law by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin.


LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN WEST VIRGINIA

4,730,512 English
770,886 All languages other than English combined
321,490 Spanish or Spanish Creole
48,459 Chinese
41,674 Tagalog
39,829 Vietnamese
39,702 German
39,522 Korean
31,339 Russian
24,055 Japanese
22,385 French (incl. Patois, Cajun)
14,559 Mon-Khmer, Cambodian
12,420 African languages
10,695 Scandinavian languages
6,545 Laotian
6,489 Arabic
6,185 Italian
5,314 Persian
5,188 Hindi
4,935 Serbo-Croatian
4,287 Polish
4,151 Other Native North American languages
4,064 Thai
2,801 Greek
2,674 Portuguese or Portuguese Creole
1,874 Urdu
1,592 Hungarian
1,563 Miao, Hmong
1,561 Hebrew
1,016 Gujarathi
675 Armenian
446 Navajo
423 Yiddish
316 French Creole