In households where one or more people spoke a language other than English, the household language assigned to all household members was the non-English language spoken by the first person with a non-English language. This assignment scheme ranked household members in the following order: householder, spouse, parent, sibling, child, grandchild, other relative, stepchild, unmarried partner, housemate or roommate, and other nonrelatives. Therefore, a person who spoke only English may have had a non-English household language assigned during tabulations by household language.

A linguistically isolated household was one in which all adults had some limitation in communicating English. A household was classified as "linguistically isolated" if, 1.) No household member age 14 years and over spoke only English, and 2). No household member age 14 years and over who spoke another language spoke English "Very well." All members of a linguistically isolated household were tabulated as linguistically isolated, including members under 14 years old who may have spoken only English.