There Are More Than 74 Languages Spoken By Boston Public School Students

Last updated on March 31, 2018

We know that Boston is a multicultural city and that is no more apparent than in the Boston Public School system. There are more than 56,000 students in BPS and they speak more than 74 languages.

English is the most commonly spoken language with more than 30,000 students using it as their primary language at home. Followed by Spanish with more than 15,000, then Cape Verdean, Vietnamese and Haitian with 1,700 to 1,900 students. Thirteen students primarily speak American Sign Language at home.

Some of the less common languages spoken include:

• Berber, which is a language from Northern Africa
• Bambara, the national language of Mali
• Hmong, a dialect continuum the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizho, Guangxi, northern Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, according to wikipedia
• Telugu, a South-central Dravidian language native to India

There are actually more than 74 languages because 143 students were denoted as “other” for the language they primarily speak at home. Demographically the Boston Public Schools are 42% Hispanic, 34% Black, 14% White, 9% Asian, 1% other/multiracial and 45% of students’ first language is not English.

Here is the list of all the languages spoken in the Boston Public Schools. The information was gathered from when parents fill out information about their children when registering for schools.