Best Places for Cross-Cultural Friendships (2026 Survey)

Language barriers exist across almost all of the continental United States, and you don’t need to travel internationally to experience this. Language barriers can exist at the supermarket checkout, in a hospital, on a supplier call.

We commissioned a survey of 3,024 U.S. residents to identify where in the country language barriers are overcome when it comes to friendships and business.

Our survey also produced a ranking of where in America cross-cultural friendships are most likely to emerge.

Key Findings

When it comes to the office, or place of work, language barriers are a frequent event.

We found that almost half (43%) of respondents said their work involves communicating with someone whose preferred language differs from their own at least once a week.

Examples include interactions with customers, colleagues, or suppliers. And it is not just employees with international positions, but it occurs across the work spectrum.

The survey also found that 17% of workers encounter language barriers on a daily basis. Just 38% said it never comes up. This means that almost 2 in 3 (62%) of workers have multilingual communication at work at least occasionally.

The workplace is where language barriers are most likely to be overcome.

In fact, over half of respondents (53%) said they have formed a friendship with a colleague whose first language differs from their own. However, this contrasts with the 35% who admitted that a potential friendship never got going because both sides struggled to communicate.

Repetition may explain why relationships are more likely to develop in a work environment. For example, colleagues at work get more than one attempt. Strangers at community events, however, often do not get another chance to interact, particularly if the first one is awkward.

The study suggests fluency in a language is a less influential factor when forming friendships than people would assume.

In fact, 48% of respondents have built a close friendship when neither person initially spoke the other's first language fluently. And when it comes to the workplace, the lesson for employers is simple: a team does not have to be fully bilingual for business relationships to flourish. Workers just need a bit of support with the initial interactions.

As many managers will attest, friendships among colleagues can work wonders for team morale. A language barrier that keeps colleagues from interacting, therefore, becomes a staffing issue as much as a social one.

Retail, healthcare, and finance are the industries where most cross-language interactions happen.

These industries were followed by IT, tech, public sector, charity, education, hospitality, and pharmaceutical. It makes sense that retail and hospitality are frontline industries: workers in a store or at a front desk meet whoever walks in, in whatever language they speak.

In a different way, it is unsurprising that finance, IT and tech emerged among the top 10. Many interactions in these industries happen on Zoom and Google Meet meetings, where a meeting translator with live captions does a job that used to need an interpreter on the call.

The neighborhoods in which cross-cultural friendships are most likely to blossom.

We also quizzed respondents about relationships they have developed with people whose first language is not English. Little Haiti in Miami came top, followed by Flushing in Queens and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Jackson Heights, North Miami, Sunset Park, Albuquerque's International District, Gulfton in Houston, Koreatown in Los Angeles and Village de l'Est in New Orleans rounded out the top ten.

The list is naturally concentrated in big urban centers. Three of the ten are in New York City, two are in Miami-Dade County, and two are in New Mexico. Only six states are represented.

Spanish emerged as the most frequent non-English language.

However, the entire list includes 14 languages besides English, including Haitian Creole, Mandarin, Bengali, Nepali, Vietnamese, Navajo, Dari, and Pashto.

That has a practical consequence for anyone running a business in these neighborhoods, where a live translation tool becomes extremely useful. For example, in Gulfton or Jackson Heights, four or five languages are in daily use within the neighborhoods.

Final Thoughts

For businesses, the major takeaway from our study is simple. If close to half (43%) of employees work across a language difference at least once a week, multilingual communication is already part of how your company runs, planned or not. The decision that is left for managers is how many resources they should dedicate to helping colleagues who speak different languages interact.