What European Countries Speak Mostly English

Today the European Union is home to 497 million people from diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The Union is the only organization that unifies so many different countries, more precisely 23 official languages and 27 European nations (Zimmer 2007, p. 20). Driven by the common idea of creating a democratic community and a globally competitive market, the EU strongly corroborates equality of every nation's culture, values and languages. Nevertheless the EU is currently struggling with the discrepancy between cultural and linguistic diversity and the equal integration of every member state. Additionally, the emerging English, as the international lingua franca, seems to put a strain on the peaceful cooperation of all 23 official languages.

In view of this unfortunate development the question aroused if Europe needs one common language. Russian kicks off our list as THE most spoken language in Europe with 120 million native speakers. Interestingly, as most European languages use the Latin alphabet, Russian on the other hand uses the Cyrillic alphabet. This can be quite a challenge for Europeans wanting to learn Russian as a foreign language. It is the sole official language of Russia, and one of the official languages in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus.

Although Europe speaks about 239 languages, about 47% of the EU citizens speak English, adding up the native speakers and those who speak it as their second langue. This development is also observable in the operating diplomacy of the EU. Almost 50% of the official documents are published in English and the conferences are mostly held in English additional to only two or three other official languages.

However, the EU spends about 1 billion Euros for translation services and employs about 2800 interpreters, of which about 500 to 700 work on a daily basis. Perhaps a surprise for many individuals, Russian tops this list as the most spoken language in Europe with roughly 140 million native speakers on the continent! This is particularly interesting because while most languages in Europe use the Latin alphabet, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet instead.

This can be a tricky challenge for would-be Russian learners, but it doesn't hinder the millions of individuals who claim it as their mother tongue. It's the official language of Russia and Belarus, but it's also still widely used in many eastern European countries . For those looking to travel to Russia, having some knowledge of the language is highly encouraged, as only about 5 percent of Russians can speak English. French is the national offficial lan-guage in two member states but also has regional official status in a fourth country.

German is official on a national level in three cases, on a regional level in two and has an uncertain offi-cial status in one more country. Imagine every EU citizen would have to choose between one advantageous common language, the EU should only operate in, or all nation's languages as EU official languages. A survey of the European Commission called 'Eurobarometer' shows, that 55% of the respondent demand one language for all EU institution, while all binding agreements should be accessible in the reader's mother tongue. Following this idea, the expensive administration could be simplified and conflicts prevented, without renouncing the rights of the EU citizens. Predominantly English-speaking countries – including the U.S. – have lower rates of foreign language learning, though the data is not comparable to the rest of Europe in some cases. In the U.S., only about 20% of K-12 students studied a foreign language in school, according to a 2017 report from the American Councils for International Education.

This includes 14% who studied Spanish, 2% who learned French and 1% who were taking German courses. The EU has 23 official languages, but only three of these are considered 'working languages' - English, French and German. In theory, daily business should be conducted in these three.

Germans, not known for their language pride, have never pushed for German to be used as a common language in the EU institutions. The English language originated in Britain and the ever-expanding British Empire spread Modern English around the world during the 18th and 19th centuries. This is why many of the countries where English is an official language were former British colonies, including Canada, Australia, South Africa and the United States. English is also widely spoken in India and in parts of Africa. Although Hindi is the most widely-spoken language in India today, English remains an official language in the country and is often used in university education, and within the field of politics.

Officially, just 12% of Indian people speak English, with many only speaking it as a second language. Nevertheless, the country has an extremely dense population, meaning that this 12% cross-section of society exceeds 100 million people. As a result, India has one of the largest English-speaking populations on the planet. English is the preeminent language of business, diplomacy, and international communication around the world. It is one of six official languages used by the United Nations and is used by organizations including the International Olympic Committee, the European Free Trade Association, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Instead, perhaps paradoxically, the opposite is taking place.

Once Britain leaves the EU, only two, relatively small, EU member countries — Ireland and Malta — will still list English as an official language . It would be everyone else's second language and thus neutral territory. Officials from non-French speaking countries like Poland, Italy or the Czech Republic are particularly eager to see the global lingua franca become the primary means of communication in the EU.

Coming in third after Russian and German is French, with the number of native speakers at about 80 million. It is the official language of France, and a co-official language of Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. French's global reach is most impressive as 29 countries claim it as an official language and about 45% of modern English words are of French origin. French is a primary language of many international organizations including the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization. More than 300 million people speak French on the five continents.

The OIF, an international organisation of French-speaking countries, comprises 88 member States and governments. French is the second most widely learned foreign language after English, and the fifth most widely spoken language in the world. Some native English speakers' attitude towards learning foreign languages could be summarized as "why should I learn a foreign language if pretty much everybody speaks English? " While it is true that English is among the most commonly learned second languages in the world, only a small percentage of the world population are able to speak it at a conversational level. Speaking of Romance languages, 45 million Europeans claim Spanish as their mother tongue. Not only is Spain one of Europes most popular travel destinations, but learning Spanish will also open up whole continents to you.

Spanish is the official language in 21 different countries and is the second-most spoken native language in the world, behind Mandarin Chinese. Spanish also has lexical influences from Arabic with 8% of the Spanish dictionary originating from Arabic – the second-largest lexical influence on Spanish behind Latin. Linguistic diversity within a country sometimes affects which languages students learn in school. This is apparent in Belgium, a country where distinct regions are French-speaking while other areas predominantly speak Flemish or German. In the Flemish-speaking community, nearly all students learn French, which is considered a foreign language in that region, while most students in the French-speaking communities learn Dutch.

A similar environment can be found in Luxembourg; Belgium and Luxembourg are the only countries where a majority of students are not learning English in school. The next-most studied languages in European schools are French, German and Spanish, each garnering no more than 15% of students participating in 2017. Russian, studied in a formal classroom by 2% of Europeans, is the only other foreign language that more than 1% of European students learn.

I think all europeans who are not in education should be allowed to join language courses of one or more EU languages, if possible for free (or at least deductible from taxes?). To be more realistic, I actually think that in order to have financed a course of a "smaller" european language, it should be compulsory to do a course in one of the EU procedural languages . Moreover I think these citizens should always be allowed to test their language skills over their lives, to keep track of their learning even after finishing the course. These tests could be provided by the cities so that the local institutions could then provide statistics on the results to the EU.

Despite having two different official languages, Canada has the third largest English-speaking population, with somewhere in the region of 20 million native speakers, while Australia is next in the list, with around 17 million. The region with the least Spanish speakers, Asia has hosted the Spanish language since the sixteenth century, when Spanish explorers colonized the Philippines and set about imposing their rule and spreading Christianity. Here, Spanish was spoken primarily by the elite – businesspeople, intellectuals, missionaries and the local court. Briefly in 1973, then finally in 1987, Spanish lost its title as the Philippines' official language.

What Countries Speak Mostly English English language, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that is closely related to the Frisian, German, and Dutch languages. English originated in England and is the dominant language of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and various island nations in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is also an official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa. English is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries of the world, and it is that status that has given it the position of a global lingua franca. It is estimated that about a third of the world's population, some two billion persons, now use English. You had to be expecting this one to pop up somewhere on the list, right?

English is the fourth most widely spoken language in Europe with approximately 70 million native English speakers – the number of English-speaking expats residing in Europe significantly adds to this figure. It is one of the official languages of Ireland, along with Irish, and is the de facto language of the United Kingdom. English is the most spoken second language in Europe followed by German and French. In Spain, roughly eight-in-ten adults speak Castilian Spanish – the country's only official language at the national level – when they are at home. Students in Europe learn foreign languages in school at a much higher rate than their American counterparts. They also tend to learn more languages throughout their education due to national mandates.

Part of this linguistic imbalance may be because most European students are learning English in school, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. While it would be ideal to be fluent in the native language before visiting a foreign country, most of the time that is not going to be the case. Fortunately, it's not too difficult to communicate what you want, even when you are not fully fluent. Even so, it's polite to at least introduce yourself in the native tongue and try to explain what you're looking for using simple phrases.

Try to memorize as many common phrases as you can, especially phrases for times you know you'll have to interact with a local, like when ordering in a restaurant or checking into a hotel. Come up with a list of phrases you think you might need to learn before you go on your trip and memorize as many as you can. You can also bring a phrase book with you everywhere you go, or download a phrasebook app to your phone, but this can be slower and more awkward than just learning the phrases.

English is, in the minds of European citizens and in all countries in the world, the language of the UK and the US. The UK, the country which leaves our union and mock us since then, and does not respect the treaties we signed with it. The US, which was always against the diplomatic/economic/military... Independence of the EU, and will do everything it can to prevent it. And we are supposed to make this language official in our countries ??

Now that the UK left, it's a foreign language for 99% of EU citizens. English as the unique language of the EU would give an enormous & unfair advantage to the 1% English native speakers. At the time of partition, English had become the first language of the vast majority in Northern Ireland. It had small elderly Irish-speaking populations in the Sperrin Mountains as well as in the northern Glens of Antrim and Rathlin Island. There were also pockets of Irish speakers in the southernmost part of County Armagh.

All of these Irish speakers were bilingual and chose to speak English to their children, and thus these areas of Northern Ireland are now entirely English-speaking. However, in the 2000s a Gaeltacht Quarter was established in Belfast to drive inward investment as a response to a notable level of public interest in learning Irish and the expansion of Irish-medium education since the 1970s. In recent decades, some Nationalists in Northern Ireland have used it as a means of promoting an Irish identity. However, the amount of interest from Unionists remains low, particularly since the 1960s. About 165,000 people in Northern Ireland have some knowledge of Irish.

Ability varies; 64,847 people stated they could understand, speak, read and write Irish in the 2011 UK census, the majority of whom have learnt it as a second language. Otherwise, except for place names and folk music, English is effectively the sole language of Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement specifically acknowledges the position both of Irish and of Ulster Scots in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. Of course such a European lingua franca would have to meet certain requirements, such as neutrality, historical background, flexibility and easy acquirement, in order to be suitable for European Community. The ancient lingua franca Latin, the artificial language Esperanto and the current international lingua franca English were considered as a potential lingua franca.

However none of them is able to meet the requirements and foster the European integration at the same time. Not even English, which proved to be a commonly used working language in the EU, is able to create a European identity. In addition, choosing English as the European lingua franca would discriminate all other countries not having English as their national language. This hegemonic language allocation would likely end in an international conflict and eventually threaten the cultural diversity.

So in the end a monolingual solution cannot be the future of the EU and its citizens. Most students in Ireland learn English and Gaelic, but neither is considered a foreign language. Likewise, the National University of Ireland found 30% of Irish graduates complete their secondary education without a foreign language in their final qualification. And while the UK does mandate that students study at least one foreign language in school, they have the latest minimum starting age of all countries in Europe . Studies from the BBC and the British Academy have shown steady decreases in the number of British secondary students taking exams in foreign languages, with noteworthy drop-offs in French and German language students since 2017.

While English predominates across these 29 countries, there are some notable regional and country-level differences in who learns which languages in school. Russian is, for example, most often learned in countries that border the Russian Federation or are former members of the Soviet bloc, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Bulgaria. French and German appear most often as non-English foreign languages studied in school, in 29 and 23 countries, respectively. Apart from two big cities — Moscow and Saint Petersburg most people in Russian don't know English or any other foreign language. It stems from the fact that Russia has had a great influence on its neighbouring countries for many years and Russian is the primary or secondary language taught.

It can be surprising, but Russian was the second language after English used on the Internet . Currently, there is a trend in Russia to learn foreign languages and it is probable that in the near future Russians will communicate in foreign languages more freely, for now English proficiency in Russia is rarely met. The Outer Circle — This confusingly named circle is actually the second of the three, lodged firmly in between its smaller and larger siblings. The Outer Circle comprises countries with small communities of native English speakers and widespread use of English as a second language. English is not the primary language or the mother tongue, but it is widely used as a lingua franca language for trade and business, as well as a bridge language between people whose native tongues are different from one another. Countries in the Outer Circle include India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Kenya, Jamaica and Papua New Guinea, and Singapore—where English is so prevalent that it may soon become the primary language.

The Outer Circle is also referred to as the "norm-developing" circle, as it adopts but also challenges the norms created by the Inner Circle. There are also nations in which English is a de facto national language, meaning that it exists in reality and is practiced, even though it is not officially recognized by law. This is especially true in countries that have no official language. For example, even though English is the most commonly spoken language in the United States, the country actually has no legally declared official language at the federal level.

Of the nations where English is a de facto national language, the United States is the most populous with an estimated 332 million people. Luxembourg is a member country of the EU since January 1, 1958, with its geographic size of 2,586 km², and population number 562,958, as per 2015. Its capital is Luxembourg and the official languages in Luxembourg are French and German. Luxembourg's currency is Euro (€) since it became a member of the Eurozone on January 1, 1999. The political system is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy.