I was surprised by the controversy that sprang up when Coca-Cola’s thirty-second commercial featuring “America the Beautiful” sung in multiple languages first aired during the Super Bowl.

I was surprised that among of all of the commercials to air during the big game — cute puppies, Stephen Colbert as a pistachio, David Beckham in various states of undress — this was the one that the Internet decided to fixate on. To criticize, to hate, to Tweet, to Facebook, to praise, to share, to comment on, to question. (To blog about). But at the core of the controversy, it was one question, and millions of people’s answers to it, that hung in the balance:

Does this commercial represent the America we live in?

In a country where over 300 non-English languages are spoken, and 20.8 percent of the population speaks a language other than English, it’s easy to dismiss the question with the attitude that more than a few commentators took: “This is the reality of a multilingual America, deal with it.”

But the question is more complex than that.

It took a couple of weeks (and Coca-Cola debuting a ninety-second cut of the commercial during the Olympics Opening Ceremony) for the thought to occur to me: where better to look for answers than the official source on who comprises America, US census data? Here’s how the languages sung in the Coca-Cola commercial, and the languages spoken across the country during the last three decades, break down.