Nahuatl language in the United States

The Nahuatl language in the United States is spoken primarily by Mexican immigrants from indigenous communities and Chicanos who study and speak Nahuatl as L2. Despite the fact that there is no official census of the language in the North American country, it is estimated that there are around 140,800 Nahuatl speakers.^{[citation needed]} During the last decades, the United States has carried out many educational initiatives aimed at teaching Nahuatl as a language of cultural heritage.^[1]

Thanks to first-hand sources collected over several decades, it is known that there are Nahua communities in the cities of Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and Riverside, with the first two (known as the "Nahua migratory capital cities"^[2] since they were established as international referents of the Nahua region since the 1980s) where community networks have been consolidated.^[3][4] In California, Nahuatl is the fourth indigenous language of Mexico that is most present in the state's agriculture, behind Mixtec, Zapotec and Triqui.^[5]

The California Indigenous Farmworker Study (IFS) estimates based on the California Indigenous Community Survey (ICS) that, in rural areas of that state alone, there are about 165,000 Mexicans who speak an indigenous language from the states of Oaxaca (Zapotec, Mixtec, Mazatec, Mixe, Triqui), Guerrero (Nahuatl, Mixtec, Tlapaneco, Amuzgo), Puebla (Nahuatl, Totonac) and Michoacán (Purepecha, Nahuatl), mainly. However, the number of speakers of each language is not specified and the speaking population in urban areas is not included.^[6]