In a rejoicing moment for Telugu speakers, the language has achieved the coveted status of the 3rd most spoken language in the United States of America. 3.2 lakh people in the US speak Telugu, which is enormous, considering the total population of US. In the US census bureau 2012-16 survey, 321695 people above 5 years speak Telugu at home, while 238699 speak Tamil at home.
This is the first instance of an Indian language like Telugu being counted on an individual basis, as previously, Indian languages like Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, and Bengali were categorized together as other Indic language / Asian languages. Hindi is the only language to figure in the top 10 list, with 7.4 lakh speakers.
For both Tamil and Telugu, the maximum concentration of people speaking these 2 languages exist in California, Texas, and New Jersey. This isn't surprising as it's common for people down south of India migrating to us for their tech jobs. Best examples of Indian biggies in the US include Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, Adobe systems Shantanu Narayan.
