Brits are the least likely of any national in Europe to be able to speak another language beyond their mother tongue, with nearly two thirds of the country’s respondents saying they could not use a second language in 2016.
According to data from [Eurostat](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/edat_aes_l21/default/table?lang=en), other countries with over 50 percent of respondents who reported only speaking one language are Romania (64.2 percent) and Hungary (57.6 percent). However, Spain and France too have a higher share of respondents who cannot speak a second language than the European average of 35.4 percent. The Northern European countries of Norway, Denmark and Sweden are among the nations more proficient when it comes to language skills, all with under 10 percent of their countries’ respondents saying that they could only speak their mother tongue.
According to the newly published [OECD Skills Outlook 2023: Skills for a Resilient Green and Digital Transition](https://www.oecd.org/education/oecd-skills-outlook-e11c1c2d-en.htm), one reason for the variation in language proficiency in Europe is due to the varying extent to which school systems offer children and teens the necessary learning opportunities to develop these skills.
Romania once again the class dumbass
I can understand the UK – they speak what everyone else speaks
I can understand Hungary and Romania – Nobody goes there.
But Spain?…
Out of the 21.5% for Belgium how many of those are Walloon?
This comaprision is unfair. UK is so high cause they don’t really need a foreing language. Meanwhile most Europeans do as english is an essential.
You should comapre Europeans who speak a foreign language, except English with Brits who speak a foreign lanugage.
Does anyone have the data for the Netherlands? I’d suspect it’s somewhere in the Denmark/Latvia/Sweden group, but maybe that’s just subjective?
I went to Sardinia/Italy a couple of years ago. Went to pick up some stuff at the local shop, and the staff didn’t speak a word of English. Not only that, they didn’t even recognize the language.
I understand a little Italian, and could somewhat piece together that they were discussing what language it was I was speaking.
I mean, when you don’t even recognize english, then you need some more education as an EU citizen.
Am a Dane.
As the old joke says:
How do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual.
How do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
How do you call someone who speaks only one language? British.
I doubt that Greece is really so low. I often visit Greece, I speak Greek, and I know that most people I interact with can speak English.
Plot twist: the people in Germany who rely only on their mother tongue, don’t speak German.
*Cries in scandinavian*
Wtf, Belgium has three official languages… All people in flanders are required to learn english french and dutch obv. So I dont think this is completely right…
France might be lower, but some just refuse to speak english
I get Romania since Romanian is basically a global language at this point, but why are the British so high on the list?
Jézusom…
As for Hungary, if they are gonna include ages up until 64, everyone who attended school before 1990 would have been taught russian and the moment you leave school you give it up forever because nobody actually wants to speak russian. People in their 30s and under should do fairly well in english (at least near big cities).
Hungarian is also a way different language than anything else in europe. Its not like you’d be able to pick up the basics of your neighbour’s language simply because of similarities (or culture).
And then there is the continous decline of education in the past 10-15 years (its never been good anyway) with a certain polticial agenda to keep that way so yeah… I’d be way more surprised if the data was better.
I mean English is basically the Lingua Franca of Europe. To such an extend i wouldnt even count it as speaking a second language. So it makes sense that the Brits are least likely to speak another language.
Loads of schools teach French, German, Spanish or even Italian in school. Which makes sense. I would like to see these statistics for only other big European Languages thou. So not including local languages like Gaelic or Euskara, or immigrant languages. But purely the languages that you were taught or had to learn.
Why is Norway’s rate so much worse than their Scandinavian counterparts?
In Latvia you need to know at lest 3 languages to survive…
Romance speaking countries in general arent big on 2nd languages huh?
Rule Britannia
These kind of surveys are always taken in cities or on university campuses…
Go to Sweden and go north of Uppsala and you tell me how far English is gonna carry you in the boonies. Good luck.
It’s a hard choice for Brits. What language do we focus on? German is the language of the EU. Spanish is common throughout the Americas. Chinese is huge for business. French is common in many old colonies. And of course making it worse is that many other countries teach their children English so now there’s even less need to learn another language.
Yeah, a part of it is laziness but there is also a element of difficulty choosing one to focus on.
Added note in response to someone else in here, I agree it really fucks me off when people do not make an attempt to dampen their accent and annunciate when speaking to foreigners. Signed, a Scotsman.
Shouldn’t France be in the first place with 100 percent?
Almost a decade old stats
Could there be a cultural difference in what “knowing a language” means to different people?
Like, 1 person could have learnt foreign language at school for 3 years, be able to make basic greetings, talk about weather, colors, numbers and consider it as “knowing a language” and another could do the same but consider it as “not real language knowledge.”
In Poland it’s common to learn 3+ foreign languages during your education, but most people can’t do much more than some basic convo so they don’t claim to know those languages if asked. Like “I could communicate in it if I had to, but I wouldn’t read or watch a show in it” level.
And it is a notorious problem in Polish education – teens not being confident in their foreign language abilities, despite having the knowledge. Refusing to even try speaking or enjoying foreign media, despite being able to, if they wanted.
The french not being first is a crime
Makes sense. Romanian ones surprised me, as most of the ones I know, they speak English too.
2016 is pretty much outdated, for many of these countries it’s the old people who speak only their mother tongue, so logically many of these numbers wouldnbe lower now.
Spaniards speak a low level of English generally (even though they are taught from preschool the methods are just piss poor) but they do usually speak local languages like Valencian, Catalán, Gallego, etc… So most Spanish are bilingual at least.
Spanish is also a common language worldwide so much like the English, they have many options for travel as well.
Source: lived in Spain for over 20 years.
Doubt Spain….
Taking into account half of the country has to learn a local language.
in Belgium, is there a difference between the flemmish and the wallon or the german speaking regions? From experience/impression i’d say yes….
32 comments
Brits are the least likely of any national in Europe to be able to speak another language beyond their mother tongue, with nearly two thirds of the country’s respondents saying they could not use a second language in 2016.
According to data from [Eurostat](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/edat_aes_l21/default/table?lang=en), other countries with over 50 percent of respondents who reported only speaking one language are Romania (64.2 percent) and Hungary (57.6 percent). However, Spain and France too have a higher share of respondents who cannot speak a second language than the European average of 35.4 percent. The Northern European countries of Norway, Denmark and Sweden are among the nations more proficient when it comes to language skills, all with under 10 percent of their countries’ respondents saying that they could only speak their mother tongue.
According to the newly published [OECD Skills Outlook 2023: Skills for a Resilient Green and Digital Transition](https://www.oecd.org/education/oecd-skills-outlook-e11c1c2d-en.htm), one reason for the variation in language proficiency in Europe is due to the varying extent to which school systems offer children and teens the necessary learning opportunities to develop these skills.
Romania once again the class dumbass
I can understand the UK – they speak what everyone else speaks
I can understand Hungary and Romania – Nobody goes there.
But Spain?…
Out of the 21.5% for Belgium how many of those are Walloon?
This comaprision is unfair. UK is so high cause they don’t really need a foreing language. Meanwhile most Europeans do as english is an essential.
You should comapre Europeans who speak a foreign language, except English with Brits who speak a foreign lanugage.
Does anyone have the data for the Netherlands? I’d suspect it’s somewhere in the Denmark/Latvia/Sweden group, but maybe that’s just subjective?
I went to Sardinia/Italy a couple of years ago. Went to pick up some stuff at the local shop, and the staff didn’t speak a word of English. Not only that, they didn’t even recognize the language.
I understand a little Italian, and could somewhat piece together that they were discussing what language it was I was speaking.
I mean, when you don’t even recognize english, then you need some more education as an EU citizen.
Am a Dane.
As the old joke says:
How do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual.
How do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
How do you call someone who speaks only one language? British.
I doubt that Greece is really so low. I often visit Greece, I speak Greek, and I know that most people I interact with can speak English.
Plot twist: the people in Germany who rely only on their mother tongue, don’t speak German.
*Cries in scandinavian*
Wtf, Belgium has three official languages… All people in flanders are required to learn english french and dutch obv. So I dont think this is completely right…
France might be lower, but some just refuse to speak english
I get Romania since Romanian is basically a global language at this point, but why are the British so high on the list?
Jézusom…
As for Hungary, if they are gonna include ages up until 64, everyone who attended school before 1990 would have been taught russian and the moment you leave school you give it up forever because nobody actually wants to speak russian. People in their 30s and under should do fairly well in english (at least near big cities).
Hungarian is also a way different language than anything else in europe. Its not like you’d be able to pick up the basics of your neighbour’s language simply because of similarities (or culture).
And then there is the continous decline of education in the past 10-15 years (its never been good anyway) with a certain polticial agenda to keep that way so yeah… I’d be way more surprised if the data was better.
I mean English is basically the Lingua Franca of Europe. To such an extend i wouldnt even count it as speaking a second language. So it makes sense that the Brits are least likely to speak another language.
Loads of schools teach French, German, Spanish or even Italian in school. Which makes sense. I would like to see these statistics for only other big European Languages thou. So not including local languages like Gaelic or Euskara, or immigrant languages. But purely the languages that you were taught or had to learn.
Why is Norway’s rate so much worse than their Scandinavian counterparts?
In Latvia you need to know at lest 3 languages to survive…
Romance speaking countries in general arent big on 2nd languages huh?
Rule Britannia
These kind of surveys are always taken in cities or on university campuses…
Go to Sweden and go north of Uppsala and you tell me how far English is gonna carry you in the boonies. Good luck.
It’s a hard choice for Brits. What language do we focus on? German is the language of the EU. Spanish is common throughout the Americas. Chinese is huge for business. French is common in many old colonies. And of course making it worse is that many other countries teach their children English so now there’s even less need to learn another language.
Yeah, a part of it is laziness but there is also a element of difficulty choosing one to focus on.
Added note in response to someone else in here, I agree it really fucks me off when people do not make an attempt to dampen their accent and annunciate when speaking to foreigners. Signed, a Scotsman.
Shouldn’t France be in the first place with 100 percent?
Almost a decade old stats
Could there be a cultural difference in what “knowing a language” means to different people?
Like, 1 person could have learnt foreign language at school for 3 years, be able to make basic greetings, talk about weather, colors, numbers and consider it as “knowing a language” and another could do the same but consider it as “not real language knowledge.”
In Poland it’s common to learn 3+ foreign languages during your education, but most people can’t do much more than some basic convo so they don’t claim to know those languages if asked. Like “I could communicate in it if I had to, but I wouldn’t read or watch a show in it” level.
And it is a notorious problem in Polish education – teens not being confident in their foreign language abilities, despite having the knowledge. Refusing to even try speaking or enjoying foreign media, despite being able to, if they wanted.
The french not being first is a crime
Makes sense. Romanian ones surprised me, as most of the ones I know, they speak English too.
2016 is pretty much outdated, for many of these countries it’s the old people who speak only their mother tongue, so logically many of these numbers wouldnbe lower now.
Spaniards speak a low level of English generally (even though they are taught from preschool the methods are just piss poor) but they do usually speak local languages like Valencian, Catalán, Gallego, etc… So most Spanish are bilingual at least.
Spanish is also a common language worldwide so much like the English, they have many options for travel as well.
Source: lived in Spain for over 20 years.
Doubt Spain….
Taking into account half of the country has to learn a local language.
in Belgium, is there a difference between the flemmish and the wallon or the german speaking regions? From experience/impression i’d say yes….