Read more about Evansville’s international community in the January/February 2025 feature story.
Spend enough time milling about Evansville’s general populace, and you’ll hear a potpourri of tongues spoken. Like in most U.S. cities, English dominates the vernacular — according to SAVI data from 2022, 96.9 percent of residents over age five speak only English in Vanderburgh, Warrick, Gibson, and Posey counties in Indiana, and Henderson County in Kentucky.
Sprinkled in, though, are linguistic flavors from across the globe. Owing to the region’s sizable Latino population, Spanish is the most-spoken foreign language, with 5,011 people versed in the romance language. More than 800 people speak Chinese, 366 speak Arabic, 239 speak Vietnamese, 149 speak Korean, and 419 speak Tagalog, while nearly 1,250 residents speak languages originating from other Asian countries.
Attesting to the region’s growing population from Ukraine and surrounding Baltic countries, 262 people speak Slavic. Another growing population from Haiti speaks Creole.
Although immigrants directly hailing from Germany have slowed since the 1930s, the European country embedded in Evansville’s culture still has a big impact on its language: 677 residents speak German.
