Telugu is the fastest growing language in the US: Study

Telugu is one of the fastest growing languages in the United States of America according to a study done by US-based Centre for Immigration Studies.

According to a report by BBC, between the years 2010 and 2017 the number of US residents speaking Telugu rose by 86%. The study shows that there were 400,000 Telugu speakers in the US in 2017 -- double the number in 2010.

The rapid growth of information technology in the US in the mid-1990s needed engineers and Andhra Pradesh and now from Telangana as well, met that supply. The two states combined have more than 800 engineering colleges. The first wave Telugu-speaking immigrant engineers continue to hire software engineers from their home states. This logical pattern made Telugu number one in the fastest growing languages in the US followed by Bengali and Tamil.

On that list, out of top 10, seven are from South Asia. After Tamil, the list goes - Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Chinese, Gujarati, and Haitian.

Current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the first Indian-American Miss America Nina Davuluri are one of the notable US-based Telugu speakers.

Even though Telugu is the fastest growing language, it is nowhere near the top 20 on the list of most spoken languages in the US other than English.

That list is topped by Spanish. It is followed by Chinese and Tagalog (This Austronesian language is spoken largely in the Philippines). Vietnamese and Arabic round up the top five.