Roughly one of every five people living in the United States speaks a foreign language at home, and the fastest-growing languages are Arabic and Urdu, according to a study released Tuesday.

Nearly 63.2 million people in the U.S. spoke a language other than English at home in 2014, up from 23 million in 1980. The number has increased by 1.4 million just since 2013, according to a study prepared by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, using the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“It’s just grown a whole lot more. All of this has basically happened post-9/11.”

It’s not just immigrants. Native-born Americans account for about 44 percent of the people speaking languages other than English, more than 27.7 million people.

Also, almost 25.6 million people reported that they speak English “less than very well.” That’s up from fewer than 10.2 million in 1980.

Steven Camarota, one of the report’s authors, said language is an important unifying trait for a nation. “It reminds us that immigration is not just a question of economics,” said Camarota, director of research for the center. Camarota noted that Arabic shot up from 614,582 in 2000 to more than 1.1 million last year.

“That’s quite a growth. And it wasn’t that low in 1980. It’s just grown a whole lot more,” he said. “All of this has basically happened post-9/11.”

The increase in residents speaking Arabic and Urdu reflect people from the Muslim world who have entered through refugee and asylum programs, as well as increases through traditional immigration.

The report includes both legal and illegal immigrants and compares numbers to 1980, which is the first year the Census Bureau asked the question.

Other findings include:

  • The fastest-growing languages spoken at home are Arabic (up 29 percent since 2010), Urdu (up 23 percent) and Hindi (up 19 percent). Urdu is the most commonly spoken language in Pakistan.
  • States with the largest share of residents speaking a foreign language at home are California (43.9 percent), New Mexico (36.8 percent), Texas (35.5 percent), Nevada (30.7 percent) and New Jersey (30.6 percent).
  • Five states have seen at least a fivefold increase since 1980 in the number of people speaking a foreign language at home. The largest percentage increase of foreign language speakers from 1980 to 2014 were Nevada (up 1,001 percent), Georgia (up 875 percent), North Carolina (up 702 percent), Virginia (up 446 percent) and Tennessee (up 416 percent).

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The languages that were spoken less frequently at home in 2014 compared to 2010 tended to be European tongues, reflecting changing immigration patterns as the United States accepts newcomers form different parts of the globe. Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, German, Polish and Italian all saw double-digit declines in U.S. homes just since 2010.

Not surprisingly, the states with the highest percentage of foreign-speakers tended to be those along the border of Mexico that long have been destinations for new arrivals from Central and South America. But the ones with the fastest-growing populations of people speaking foreign languages at home are interior states not often associated with mass immigration, “even in many places where you might think (it) would be much lower,” Camarota said.

The nation’s capital leads the way with a 32.2 percent increase from 2010 to 2014. Among the fastest growing, North Dakota (up 18.2 percent), Wyoming (up 14.5 percent) Nevada (up 13.6 percent) and Oklahoma (up 12.9 percent) rounded out the top five.

The report provides insight into the demographic changes taking place in schools across the country. Almost 11.8 million school-age children last year — 21.9 percent of the population age 5 to 17 — spoke a foreign language at home. Four states exceeded 30 percent: California (43.9 percent), Texas (36.2 percent), Nevada (32.9 percent) and New Mexico (32.8 percent).

“It reminds us of the enormous challenges immigration can create for school systems,” he said.

Camarota said assimilation is more difficult when newcomers are slow to learn English. After a wave of massive immigration in the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century, he said, the immigrant population declined precipitously, falling to 5 percent of the population by 1970.

That decades-long slowdown probably helped the country absorb the immigrant wave that came before, he said.

“If the past is to be a guide, it might make sense to have another pause,” he said.