Catalina Espinosa
Research expert covering society, economy, and politics for Europe and the EU
Languages in the UK - Statistics & Facts
There are a multitude of languages spoken across the United Kingdom, reflecting the diversity of its modern-day population. As of 2021, approximately 52.6 million people in England and Wales spoke English (or Welsh in Wales) as their main language, around 91.1 percent of the population. This was down from 92.3 percent of the population in 2011, or around 49.8 million people. The most common non-English language spoken in England and Wales as of 2021 was Polish, which had 611,845 speakers, followed by Romanian at 471,954 speakers, and Panjabi with 290,745 speakers. As the nation’s capital, perhaps it is unsurprising that London is the most linguistically multicultural part of England and Wales. The three local authorities with the highest share of people reporting a foreign language as their main language were all London Boroughs (Newham, Brent, and Ealing).
Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish speakers
Aside from English, there are a variety of non-English native languages spoken by people in the UK. In Wales, for example there were approximately 900,600 people who could speak Welsh in 2022, equivalent to 29.5 percent of the population. The region with the highest concentration of Welsh speakers in this year was Gwynedd, in the North West of Wales, where around three-quarters of the population said they could speak Welsh. By contrast, Blaenau Gwent, in South East Wales had just 14.5 percent of people who spoke Welsh. Gaelic speakers in Scotland were less numerous than Welsh speakers in Wales. Approximately 58,003 people, or 1.7 percent of the Scottish population spoke Gaelic, with Eilean Siar having by far the highest proportion, at 61.2 percent of the population. In Northern Ireland, approximately 11 percent of people there had some ability to understand Irish, with 3.7 percent able to speak, read, write, and understand Irish. During the 2022/23 academic year, 7,310 students at schools in Northern Ireland were mainly taught at schools in Irish, compared with 6,519 in 2018/19.Language learning in the UK
The number of high school students taking a modern language at GCSE level has fallen significantly since the early 2000s. In 2002, just over three quarters of students were taking a modern language, compared with just 47 percent in 2017. While the number of students taking Spanish has grown in recent years, the numbers taking French and German has fallen. Compared with 2010, there were over 50,700 more students taking Spanish in 2021, compared with 35,960 fewer French students, and 28,890 fewer German students. At a more advanced education stage, there were 9,088 Spanish A Level exam entries in Summer 2022, compared with 7,929 French ones, and just 2,803 German entries.
