The Texas Linguistic Landscape & Multilingual Heritage

English and Spanish are the foundational communicative pillars of Texas. Spanish serves as the most common non-English language in nearly every single one of Texas's 254 counties. Approximately 79% of Texans who speak a language other than English at home speak Spanish.

The linguistic reality of Texas Spanish encompasses formal international and US Spanish standards alongside deep Mexican regional varieties (Norteño, Bajío, Central) shaped by centuries of cross-border commerce, agricultural roots, and familial kinship along the Rio Grande and across the Texas Triangle (Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin).

Vietnamese is the third most spoken language in the state of Texas. Following the 1970s resettlement, major Vietnamese communities flourished in Greater Houston (Bellaire Blvd / Alief corridor), the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (Garland, Arlington), and along coastal fishing and shrimping hubs like Galveston, Port Arthur, and Palacios. Vietnamese Texans are vital contributors to commercial shrimping, engineering, healthcare, small business ownership, and higher education.

Concentrated heavily in urban hubs and research universities. Houston’s Southwest Chinatown and Katy Asian Town represent major economic powerhouses. Cantonese carries long-standing roots among early immigrant business pioneers, while Mandarin has grown exponentially through engineering, medical research at the Texas Medical Center, software development in the Silicon Hills of Austin, and aerospace in North Texas.

Widespread across Texas medical networks and suburban communities (Fort Bend County, Pearland, Katy, Plano, Irving). Filipino nurses, physicians, allied health professionals, and military families represent a crucial cornerstone of the Texas public health and civic infrastructure.

South Asian languages are expanding rapidly in Collin County (Plano, Frisco), Fort Bend County (Sugar Land, Missouri City, Katy), and Harris County. Driven by energy engineering, enterprise computing, telecommunications, and healthcare, this multilingual community bridges Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam across Texas suburbs.

Thriving communities across Dallas-Fort Worth, Greater Houston, and San Antonio with multi-generational roots in medical practice, civil engineering, international commerce, and academia. Arabic serves as a major community language in religious, civic, and commercial hubs statewide.

🌍 Other Notable Immigrant Languages in Texas

• Yoruba & Igbo (Nigerian Diaspora): Houston hosts the largest Nigerian diaspora in the United States, concentrated in Southwest Houston, Fort Bend County, and North Texas, making Yoruba and Igbo prominent community languages.
• Korean: Major business and residential corridors in Dallas (Royal Lane / Carrollton), Houston (Spring Branch), and Austin’s tech semiconductor corridor.
• French & French Creole: Spoken by West African and Caribbean diaspora families in Houston and Dallas, alongside historic connections to Louisiana Creole families in Southeast Texas (Beaumont, Port Arthur).
• Persian / Farsi: Highly educated diaspora in Greater Houston and Dallas with deep involvement in academia, medical research, and civil engineering.

Spoken historically throughout the Texas Hill Country (Gillespie, Comal, Kendall, and Medina counties) by descendants of mid-19th-century German immigrants organized under the Adelsverein. Texasdeutsch is a unique, moribund dialect that developed in geographic isolation, blending 19th-century German regional dialects with English loanwords for Texas frontier concepts (e.g., Stinkkatze for skunk, Luftschiff for airplane). Documented rigorously by the Texas German Dialect Project at UT Austin.

Preserved across agricultural settlements in Central and South Central Texas (La Grange, Schulenburg, Hallettsville, Caldwell). Texas Czech draws heavily from 19th-century Moravian dialects (Lachian and Wallachian), preserved for generations through fraternal organizations (SPJST, KJT), polka radio broadcasts, Catholic parishes, and iconic Czech bakeries across the rural Texas prairie.

In 1854, approximately 550 Sorbian/Wendish Lutheran emigrants led by Pastor John Kilian sailed to Texas aboard the Ben Nevis seeking religious and linguistic freedom, founding the settlement of Serbin in Lee County. The Wends maintained their West Slavic Upper Sorbian language alongside German and English for decades. The Texas Wendish Heritage Museum in Serbin stands today as an enduring cultural testament.

Concentrated in Bosque County, officially designated the "Norwegian Capital of Texas" by the Texas Legislature. Founded in 1854 under the leadership of pioneers like Cleng Peerson and Jens Ringness, immigrants preserved church records, gravestones, and oral traditions in Norwegian into the mid-20th century.

The very name of our state originates directly from an Indigenous greeting. In the Hasí:nay (Caddo) language of East Texas, the word taysha (or tejas to Spanish explorers) signified "friend" or "ally". Texas was born from a word of alliance, welcoming, and mutual respect among peoples.

🕯️ Historical & Memorial Linguistic Isolates of Texas

Long before European contact, Texas was home to dozens of distinct linguistic families and language isolates whose speakers shaped the rivers, plains, and coastlines:

• Karankawa: Coastal Gulf of Mexico (Galveston Bay to Corpus Christi). Linguistic isolate with preserved vocabulary recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Tonkawa: Central Texas and Balcones Escarpment. Unique linguistic isolate; revitalization efforts continue today by the Tonkawa Tribe.
• Atakapa: Southeast Texas and Louisiana borderlands (Trinity and Neches rivers). Gulf isolate family.
• Coahuilteco, Comecrudo & Cotoname: Rio Grande Valley and South Texas Plains. Ancient languages with complex grammatical structures recorded in mission documents.
• Aranama: Historic coastal bend and San Antonio River basin.

🪶 Contemporary Sovereign Nations in Texas

My Executive Plan for Language Equality in Texas

Democracy cannot function when public services, voting booths, emergency hurricane broadcasts, and school parent portals are locked behind linguistic barriers. As Governor of Texas, I will issue Executive Orders to: