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Introduction

There is no official source giving a detailed breakdown of how many people in the UK have English as a second language or the ranking of community languages spoken in the UK.

In 2001, the Department for Education and Skills (then DfEE) commissioned a report looking at the needs of people whose first language is not English focusing on barriers to employment, education and training. Their key findings reported:

• There are no reliable data on the number of people living in Great Britain whose first language is not English. This causes serious problems with the planning and delivery of education and training provision.
• At least three million people living in the United Kingdom were born in countries where English is not the national language.

Source: Research Brief RBX3/01

Outlined below are some of the sources we have identified as trying to capture indications of the linguistic diversity of the population.

We are interested to discover more about demand for this information. Please let us know your reasons for understanding which languages are spoken in the UK population by emailing statistics@cilt.org.uk. This will help us to build up a case for ensuring future language questions in population surveys.

Census Translations

Unfortunately, languages spoken is not asked in the population census. However, the census team needed to decide which languages the census forms and information leaflets needed to be translated into. Consultations were carried out with Local Authorities throughout England and Wales to ascertain the language assistance required in their areas, and advice from ethnicity and language-need experts was sought. As a consequence, Census information leaflets and questions were translated into the following 24 languages:

1. Albanian /Kosovan
2. Arabic*
3. Bengali*
4. Chinese (*Cantonese)
5. Croatian
6. Farsi /Persian
7. French
8. German
9. Greek*
10. Gujerati*
11. Hindi*
12. Italian*
13. Japanese
14. Polish
15. Portuguese
16. Punjabi*
17. Russian
18. Serbian
19. Somali*
20. Spanish
21. Swahili
22. Turkish*
23. Urdu*
24. Vietnamese*

* A dedicated language line with bilingual operators was set up for the languages starred above.

Source website: Census, 2001

Census map of London's ethnic minority communities

A map highlighting the location and spread of ethnic groups across the London boroughs has been produced from the census 2001 results. The map and key can be downloaded from the links below.

Map of London's ethnic minority communities (pdf document)

Key to the map

Central Office of Information (COI) review

In 2003, the COI Strategic Consultancy Inclusivity team were commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to undertake a review of the ethnic minority languages used by the department. The objectives were to understand the communication needs of each community and make recommendations into which languages DWP information should be translated. The priority recommended key ethnic minority languages (not specified in any order) were noted as:

1. Bengali
2. Punjabi
3. Gujerati
4. Urdu
5. Arabic
6. Classical Chinese
7. Somali
8. French
9. Polish
10. Tamil

Source website: Central Office of Information

Multilingual Capital – London only

In a survey of 850,000 children in London schools the question about first language spoken at home has been used by LEAs in London. See the publication for more details and an analysis with commentary on the London population.

Over 300 different languages are spoken by London schoolchildren. The top 40 languages spoken by pupils in London is given below with the approximate total number of pupils for each language:

English 608,500
Bengali & Sylheti 40,400
Panjabi 29,800
Gujarati 28,600
Hindi/Urdu 26,000
Turkish 15,600
Arabic 11,000
English-based Creoles 10,700
Yoruba (Nigeria) 10,400
Somali 8,300
Cantonese 6,900
Greek 6,300
Akan (Ashanti) 6,000
Portuguese 6,000
French 5,600
Spanish 5,500
Tamil (Sri Lanka) 3,700
Farsi (Persian) 3,300
Italian 2,500
Vietnamese 2,400
Igbo (Nigeria) 1,900
French-based Creoles 1,800
Tagalog (Filipino) 1,600
Kurdish 1,400
Polish 1,500
Swahili 1,000
Lingala (Congo) 1,000
Albanian 900
Luganda (Uganda) 800
Ga (Ghana) 800
Tigrinya (Sudan) 800
German 800
Japanese 800
Serbian/Croatian 700
Russian 700
Hebrew 650
Korean 550
Pashto (Afganistan) 450
Amharic (Ethiopia) 450
Sinhala (Sri Lanka) 450

Source website: Baker, P. and Eversley, J. (eds) (2000) Multilingual Capital, London: Battlebridge.

Labour Force Survey (LFS), Office for National Statistics

The LFS is the largest adult household survey in the country (96,000 in the annual local area sample). The question of 'Nationality/ National Identity' is asked. This is a very rough indicator of languages spoken and although not ideal, it may be a better indicator than 'Country of Birth' asked in the census.

The Regional Language Audits carried out by the Regional Language Networks reported on Labour Force Survey nationality estimates within the regions.

The LFS does try to ascertain the number of speakers of other languages at home but does not get any details on the actual languages spoken. The survey estimated that there are around 2 million speakers of other languages* at home in the UK (Winter 2003/4).

* This refers to people resident in the UK that speak a language other than English, Welsh, Gaelic or Ulster Scots. The LFS, summer 2003 estimated the number of people that speak Welsh at home in Wales is 181,836 (about 6% of the population)
and the number of people that speak Ulster Scots at home in Scotland is 38,296 (less than 1% of the population).

To enquire about the 'Nationality/ National Identity' LFS statistics contact us at statistics@cilt.org.uk

Source website: Labour Force Survey

Health Survey for England (HSE)

The HSE is a continuous survey that had a minority ethnic boost (adults only) in 1999 and main language spoken was asked. Results of language spoken by ethnicity were analysed and reported on as follows:

Black Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese respondents were asked what was their main spoken language. Virtually all the Black Caribbeans (99%) said that it was English. Among Indians, while the majority spoke English as their main language (55%), significant minorities spoke Punjabi (20%) and Gujarati (19%). Fewer than half of Pakistanis (45%) and Chinese (41%) spoke English as their main language. Other languages spoken by significant proportions of Pakistanis were Punjabi (32%) and Urdu (20%). Half of Chinese respondents named Cantonese as their main spoken language. Bangladeshis were least likely to name English as their main spoken language - only 20% did so. The main languages spoken by Bangladeshis were Bengali (54%) and Sylheti (25%).

Table: Main language spoken by minority ethnic group

The minority ethnic boost was repeated in 2004. Results will be due out in 2005.

Source (full report): 1999 Health Survey for England.

The survey is commissioned by the Department of Health and carried out by The National Centre for Social Research.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language

For a comprehensive guide to world languages the Cambridge encyclopedia of Language, David Crystal (1997) Cambridge University Press, has a chapter on the languages of the world. It details the range of languages in past or present use - numbers, speakers and sources. The chapter quotes that there is no agreed total for the number of languages spoken in the world today. Most reference books give a figure of 5,000 to 6,000, but estimates have varied from 3,000 to 10,000. The chapter then goes on to discuss the issues. Speaker estimates for the world's top 40 languages are provided based on the number of mother-tongue speakers.

Source website: The Cambridge encyclopedia of Language, David Crystal (1997) Cambridge University Press.

BBC sources

BBC Multilingual Nation contains information about languages spoken in the British Isles.
BBC Languages across Europe provides some country and language profiles across Europe.

We are working to update this information, please contact us at statistics@cilt.org.uk if you have any queries or further information to add.