How many people in the United States speak Yiddish at home, how rare is that among everyone 5 and older, and how many of them live in Colorado? The Census Bureau’s most detailed language tables give a clear national answer, and a much older, much fuzzier one for Colorado.
The US answer
In the United States, about 194,800 people aged 5 and older spoke “Eastern Yiddish” at home in 2017 to 2021, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). That is a survey estimate with a margin of error of 5,399. “Eastern Yiddish” is the table’s label for nearly all Yiddish speakers; a separate line labelled just “Yiddish” adds 157 more (margin of error 148), so the total is still about 195,000 (our arithmetic).
The same table counts about 310.3 million US residents aged 5 and older in those years. That works out to about 1 in 1,593 people in that age group speaking Eastern Yiddish at home (our arithmetic: 310,300,000 divided by 194,800). The speaker count is a survey estimate, so the ratio is an estimate too.
Of those speakers, about 83,260 (margin of error 3,236) reported speaking English less than “very well” in 2017 to 2021. The Census Bureau notes that this rating reflects the person’s own view of their English, or the view of another household member, because one member usually fills out the survey for everyone.
What the count covers
As its title says, the table counts languages spoken at home by people aged 5 and older. The Census Bureau also notes that some languages go unreported, “either because the ACS did not sample the households where those languages are spoken, or because the person filling out the survey did not report the language or reported another language instead.”
These detailed tables are occasional. The routine yearly ACS release publishes 42 languages and language groups, while the 2017 to 2021 detailed tables sort answers into more than 1,300 possible languages or language groups. The Census Bureau calls this only the third such tabulation since the ACS began. For the same question asked of Esperanto, Klingon and Na’vi, see our page on how many people speak invented languages.
Colorado: an older, rougher count
Colorado’s latest count of Yiddish speakers in these detailed tables covers 2009 to 2013. The ACS estimated that 135 Colorado residents aged 5 and older spoke “Yiddish” at home in those years, with a margin of error of 64. The Census Bureau describes its margins as 90 percent margins: the span from the estimate minus the margin to the estimate plus the margin has roughly a 90 percent chance of containing the true value. For Colorado that span runs from 71 to 199 people (our arithmetic). The margin is about 47 percent of the estimate itself (our arithmetic). Odds built on a count that uncertain would mostly measure the margin, so this page gives none for Colorado. The table also rounds detailed language counts like this one to the nearest multiple of five.
Why there is no newer Colorado count
The 2017 to 2021 detailed table behind the US answer covers the nation as a whole. For individual states, that release publishes only each state’s top 15 languages spoken at home, and Yiddish is not among Colorado’s top 15. The 2009 to 2013 release, by contrast, published detailed tables for each of the 50 states, plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico. That leaves the 2009 to 2013 table as the most recent of these detailed tabulations with a Colorado count for Yiddish.
The Colorado and US figures come from different tables, different survey years and different language labels, so they cannot be read as a change over time.
The short version
In the United States, about 194,800 people aged 5 and older spoke Eastern Yiddish at home in 2017 to 2021 (margin of error 5,399), or about 1 in 1,593 people in that age group by our arithmetic. Colorado’s latest count in these Census tables, 135 speakers (margin of error 64), is from 2009 to 2013 and is too uncertain to turn into odds.
More of our pages on people and how they live are on the Relationships page.
Last checked: 2026-10-20, against the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey detailed language tables for 2017 to 2021 and 2009 to 2013. This article was machine-checked against the sources above and has not been expert-reviewed. Spotted an error or a newer public figure? Please tell us on our contact page with the article link and we will review it.
Sources
- S1 U.S. Census Bureau, Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over, 2017 to 2021 (American Community Survey 5 year estimates, released June 2025): Table 1 (United States), Table 2 (top 15 languages by state) and the user note. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/language-use/2017-2021-lang-tables.html . Saved copy accessed Oct 20, 2026.
- S2 U.S. Census Bureau, Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over, 2009 to 2013 (American Community Survey, released October 2015): Table 6 (Colorado) and the user note. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2013/demo/2009-2013-lang-tables.html . Saved copy accessed Oct 20, 2026.