Question of the Day - 07 June 2019

Spanish, of course, is the second language that goes farthest in the Western world and you'll hear it fairly frequently in the tourist corridor in Las Vegas, spoken by both visitors and locals. According to Census Bureau figures, 22.6% of the overall population of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area are native Spanish speakers. 

Care to hazard a guess at what Las Vegas’ third most spoken language is? If you guessed Tagalog, you’re correct. If you’ve never heard of Tagalog, it’s the official language of the Philippines (though the more inclusive -- and less ethnic -- name for it now is Filipino, though you sometimes still see the outdated name Pilipino). A little less than 3% of the Greater Las Vegas population speaks Tagalog. 

Around 1% of the population speaks "Chinese," which in Las Vegas is mostly Cantonese, but also Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien. That's the third largest number of foreign-language speakers and you won't go wrong with a visit to Chinatown, definitely the most ethnically diverse area of Las Vegas. 

Beyond that are Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, French, German, and others, though they make up only .1% of the population and there's no breakdown (at least not an accurate one, in our opinion) of percentage of visitors from foreign countries. 

And here's a paragraph from the answer to a similar question we ran around 10 years ago -- just for fun. 

From a completely non-scientific perspective, we’ve observed that an inordinate number of Israeli women work in strip clubs, so you might hear Hebrew if you frequent them. Kenyans fill out the ranks of the Las Vegas Marathon, so a little Swahili could be spoken around you. And New Yawkuhs, a’ cawse, speak dere own language, so dat might be a’ight (and lest we hear from sensitive Empyuh Statuhs, this writuh’s from Long Gisland, so fuhgedda bow dit).