Head up to the northern, eastern end of the Red Line and you might hear Tagalog. Get off at the Wiehle station and you may very well meet a Persian language speaker. More likely, though, Metro riders around the region are likely to hear Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, a Chinese language, French, Arabic and Amharic—the top seven tongues in the D.C. region served by WMATA.

The Federal Transit Administration advises that transit agencies offer translations of vital documents for language groups that have 1,000 people or 5 percent of the population, according to Metro’s PlanItMetro blog, which explains the agency goes about updating its Language Assistance Plan every three years to accommodate the 11 percent of the region’s population that speaks English less than “very well.”

The document and a blog post from last month offer a data-based look at the region’s collective patois—which includes more than 26 language groups, besides English, that count more than 1,000 speakers. Metro says it provides written translations of its materials and offers language assistance services upon request for the top seven languages.

Certainly Spanish dominates, with 12 percent of the region’s population counting itself fluent (and more than 200,000 Spanish speakers that speak English less than very well). Changes in the latest data set show the migration of the Chinese community away from Chinatown and into Rockville, the blog notes. And while less than 5 percent of the District’s population speaks English less than very well, that jumps to around 15 percent in Fairfax and Montgomery counties.

Metro Map by Language by PlanItMetro on Scribd