New Hampshire
Languages
Some place-names, such as Ossipee, Mascoma, and Chocorua, preserve the memory of the Pennacook and Abnaki Algonkian tribes living in the area before white settlement.
New Hampshire speech is essentially Northern, with the special features marking eastern New England, especially the loss of the final /r/, as in park and father, and /yu/ in tube and new . Raspberries sounds like /rawzberries/, a wishbone is a luckybone, gutters are eavespouts, and cows are summoned by "Loo!" Canadian French is heard in the northern region.
In 2000, 91.7% of all state residents aged five and above—a total of 935,825—spoke only English at home.
The following table gives selected statistics from the 2000 census for language spoken at home by persons five years old and over. The category "Other Indo-European languages" includes Albanian, Gaelic, Lithuanian, and Rumanian. The category "Other Asian languages" includes Dravidian languages, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, and Turkish.
| LANGUAGE | NUMBER | PERCENT |
| Population 5 years and over | 1,160,340 | 100.0 |
| Speak only English | 1,064,252 | 91.7 |
| Speak a language other than English | 96,088 | 8.3 |
| Speak a language other than English | 96,088 | 8.3 |
| French (incl. Patois, Cajun) | 39,551 | 3.4 |
| Spanish or Spanish Creole | 18,647 | 1.6 |
| German | 4,788 | 0.4 |
| Greek | 3,411 | 0.3 |
| Chinese | 3,268 | 0.3 |
| Italian | 2,649 | 0.2 |
| Portuguese or Portuguese Creole | 2,394 | 0.2 |
| Polish | 2,094 | 0.2 |
| Other Indo-European languages | 1,468 | 0.1 |
| Arabic | 1,462 | 0.1 |
| Vietnamese | 1,449 | 0.1 |
| Other Asian languages | 1,240 | 0.1 |
| Korean | 1,228 | 0.1 |
| Serbo-Croatian | 1,182 | 0.1 |
| Russian | 1,009 | 0.1 |