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Languages of the United Kingdom

October 20, 2023

English, in various dialects, is the most widely spoken language of the United Kingdom,[14] but a number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken. Regional indigenous languages are Scots and Ulster Scots and the Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and, as a revived language with few speakers, Cornish. British Sign Language is also used. There are also many languages spoken by immigrants who arrived recently to the United Kingdom, mainly within inner city areas; these languages are mainly from continental Europe and South Asia.[15]

Languages of the United Kingdom
Multilingual sign in London
MainEnglish (98%;[1] national and de facto official)[a][2][3][4]
MinorityScots (2.5%),[5] Welsh (1.3%),[6] Cornish  (<0.01% L2),[7][8][9] Scottish Gaelic, Irish,[a] Ulster Scots (0.05%),[10] Angloromani, Beurla Reagaird, Shelta
ImmigrantPolish, Punjabi, Hindi–Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Arabic, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil[11]
ForeignFrench (23%), German (9%), Spanish (8%)[b][12]
SignedBritish Sign Language, (0.002%)[c][13] Irish Sign Language, Signed English, Northern Ireland Sign Language
Keyboard layout
British QWERTY
a.^ Statistics indicate respondents who can speak at least "well".
b.^ Statistics indicate respondents with at least basic ability.
c.^ Statistics undertaken with assumptions and large disparities between home countries.

The de facto official language of the United Kingdom is English.[16] Additionally, Welsh is a de jure official language in Wales.[17][18] Welsh is spoken by 538,300 people in Wales according to the 2021 census.[19] Approximately 124,000 people speak Irish in Northern Ireland, which is an official language in Northern Ireland alongside English.[20]

List of languages and dialects Edit

Living Edit

The table below outlines living indigenous languages of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The languages of the Crown Dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) are not included here.

Language Type Spoken in Numbers of speakers in the UK
English Germanic (West Germanic) Throughout the United Kingdom 59,824,194; 98% (2011 census)[1]
Scots (Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland) Germanic (West Germanic) Scotland (Scottish Lowlands, Caithness, Northern Isles) and Berwick-upon-Tweed
Northern Ireland (Counties Down, Antrim, Londonderry) 		2.6% (2011 census)
Welsh Celtic (Brythonic) Wales (especially west and north) and parts of England near the Welsh–English border
Welsh communities in major English cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. 		1,123,500; 1.7% (2019 Wales figures, with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland estimated figures from 2011 census)[dubious – discuss]
British Sign Language BANZSL Throughout the United Kingdom 125,000[26] (2010 data)
Irish Celtic (Goidelic) Northern Ireland, with communities in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London etc. 95,000[27] (2004 data)
Angloromani Mixed Spoken by English Romanichal Traveller communities in England, Scotland and Wales 90,000[28] (1990 data)
Scottish Gaelic Celtic (Goidelic) Scotland (Scottish Highlands and Hebrides with substantial minorities in various Scottish cities)
A small community in London 		65,674 total,[4] (Scotland's 2001 Census) though those who have fluency in all three skills is 32,400[29]
Cornish Celtic (Brythonic) Cornwall (even smaller minorities of speakers in Plymouth, London, and South Wales) 557[30] (2011 data)
Shelta Mixed Spoken by Irish Traveller communities throughout the United Kingdom Est. 30,000 in UK. Fewer than 86,000 worldwide.[31]
Irish Sign Language Francosign Northern Ireland Unknown
Northern Ireland Sign Language BANZSL Northern Ireland Unknown

Anglic Edit

Further information: Anglic languages
 
Street sign in Ballywalter, Northern Ireland, in English and Ulster Scots

Insular Celtic Edit

Further information: Insular Celtic languages

Mixed Edit

Sign languages Edit

Extinct Edit

Regional languages and statistics Edit

Distribution of languages of the United Kingdom
English
 
 98%
Scots
 
 2.5%
Welsh
 
 1%
Scottish Gaelic
 
 0.1%
Irish
 
 0.1%
Cornish
 
 0.01%
 
English language proficiency in England and Wales in 2011. The 'English' category included Welsh for usual residents of Wales.
 
Percentage of English as main language in London 2021

English Edit

Main article: English language

In the 2011 UK census, 98% of people over the age of three were reported as speaking English.

English is a West Germanic language brought around the 5th century CE to the east coast of what is now England by Germanic-speaking immigrants from around present-day northern Germany, who came to be known as the Anglo-Saxons. The fusion of these settlers' dialects became what is now termed Old English: the word English is derived from the name of the Angles. English soon displaced the previously predominant British Celtic and British Latin throughout most of England. It spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via the British Empire, and of the United States since the mid-20th century, it has been widely dispersed around the world, and become the leading language of international discourse. Many English words are based on roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life. The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language, with Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries. The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give what had now become Middle English the superficial appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.

Wales Edit

Main articles: Welsh English and Welsh language
Further information: Languages of Wales
 
Bilingual road markings near Cardiff Airport, Vale of Glamorgan

Welsh (Cymraeg) emerged in the 6th century from Brittonic, the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and the extinct language known as Cumbric. Welsh is thus a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, and is spoken natively in Wales. There are also Welsh speakers in Y Wladfa (The Colony),[35] a Welsh settlement in Argentina, which began in 1865 and is situated mainly along the coast of Chubut Province in the south of Patagonia. Chubut estimates the number of Patagonian Welsh speakers to be about 1,500.[36]

Both the English and Welsh languages have official, but not always equal, status in Wales. English has de facto official status everywhere, whereas Welsh has limited, but still considerable, official, de jure, status in only the public service, the judiciary, and elsewhere as prescribed in legislation. The Welsh language is protected by the Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998, and since 1998 it has been common, for example, for almost all British Government Departments to provide both printed documentation and official websites in both English and Welsh. On 7 December 2010, the National Assembly for Wales unanimously approved a set of measures to develop the use of the Welsh language within Wales.[37][38] On 9 February 2011, this measure received Royal Assent and was passed, thus making the Welsh language an officially recognised language within Wales.[39]

The Welsh Language Board[40] indicated in 2004 that 553,000 people (19.7% of the population of Wales in households or communal establishments) were able to speak Welsh. Based on an alternative definition, there has been a 0.9 percentage point increase when compared with the 2001 census, and an increase of approximately 35,000 in absolute numbers within Wales. Welsh is therefore a growing language within Wales.[40] Of those 553,000 Welsh speakers, 57% (315,000) were considered by others to be fluent, and 477,000 people consider themselves fluent or "fair" speakers. 62% of speakers (340,000) claimed to speak the language daily, including 88% of fluent speakers.[40]

However, there is some controversy over the actual number who speak Welsh: some statistics include people who have studied Welsh to GCSE standard, many of whom could not be regarded as fluent speakers of the language. Conversely, some first-language speakers may choose not to report themselves as such. These phenomena, also seen with other minority languages outside the UK, make it harder to establish an accurate and unbiased figure for how many people speak it fluently. Furthermore, no question about Welsh language ability was asked in the 2001 census outside Wales, thereby ignoring a considerable population of Welsh speakers – particularly concentrated in neighbouring English counties and in London and other large cities. It is estimated that 110,000 to 150,000 people in England speak Welsh.[24][41]

Nevertheless, the 2011 census recorded an overall reduction in Welsh speakers, from 582,000 in 2001 to 562,000 in 2011, despite an increase in the size of the population—a 2% drop (from 21% to 19%) in the proportion of Welsh speakers.[42]

Scotland Edit

Main articles: Scottish English, Scots language, and Scottish Gaelic
Further information: Languages of Scotland

Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) Edit

 
Bilingual sign (Scottish Gaelic and English) at Partick railway station, Glasgow
Main article: Scottish Gaelic

Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish. Outside Scotland, a dialect of the language known as Canadian Gaelic exists in Canada on Cape Breton Island and isolated areas of the Nova Scotia mainland. This variety has around 2000 speakers, amounting to 1.3% of the population of Cape Breton Island.

The 2011 census of Scotland showed that a total of 57,375 people (1.1% of the Scottish population aged over three years old) in Scotland could speak Gaelic at that time, with the Outer Hebrides being the main stronghold of the language. The census results indicate a decline of 1,275 Gaelic speakers from 2001. A total of 87,056 people in 2011 reported having some facility with Gaelic compared to 93,282 people in 2001, a decline of 6,226.[43][44] Despite this decline, revival efforts exist and the number of speakers of the language under age 20 has increased.[45]

The Gaelic language was given official recognition for the first time in Scotland in 2005, by the Scottish Parliament's Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, which aims to promote the Gaelic language to a status "commanding equal respect" with English. However, this wording has no clear meaning in law, and was chosen to prevent the assumption that the Gaelic language is in any way considered to have "equal validity or parity of esteem with English".[46] A major limitation of the act, though, is that it does not constitute any form of recognition for the Gaelic language by the UK government, and UK public bodies operating in Scotland, as reserved bodies, are explicitly exempted from its provisions.[47]

Scots Edit

Main article: Scots language

The Scots language originated from Northumbrian Old English. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria stretched from south Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth from where the Scottish elite continued the language shift northwards. Since there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots. Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other. Consequently, Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, but with its own distinct dialects. Alternatively Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish.

The 2011 UK census was the first to ask residents of Scotland about Scots. A campaign called Aye Can was set up to help individuals answer the question.[48][49] The specific wording used was "Which of these can you do? Tick all that apply" with options for 'Understand', 'Speak', 'Read' and 'Write' in three columns: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots.[50] Of approximately 5.1 million respondents, about 1.2 million (24%) could speak, read and write Scots, 3.2 million (62%) had no skills in Scots and the remainder had some degree of skill, such as understanding Scots (0.27 million, 5.2%) or being able to speak it but not read or write it (0.18 million, 3.5%).[51] There were also small numbers of Scots speakers recorded in England and Wales on the 2011 Census, with the largest numbers being either in bordering areas (e.g. Carlisle) or in areas that had recruited large numbers of Scottish workers in the past (e.g. Corby or the former mining areas of Kent).[52]

Northern Ireland Edit

Main articles: Languages of Northern Ireland, Irish language, Irish language in Northern Ireland, and Ulster Irish
Further information: Languages of Ireland

Ulster Scots Edit

Main article: Ulster Scots dialects

2% speak Ulster Scots, seen by some as a language distinct from English and by some as a dialect of English, according to the 1999 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey (around 30,000 speakers). Some definitions of Ulster Scots may also include Standard English spoken with an Ulster Scots accent. The language was brought to Ireland by Scottish planters from the 16th Century.

Irish (Gaeilge) Edit

Main articles: Irish language in Northern Ireland and Ulster Irish
Further information: Irish language
 
Bilingual sign (Irish and English) in Newry

Irish was the predominant language of the Irish people for most of their recorded history, and they brought their Gaelic speech with them to other countries, notably Scotland and the Isle of Man where it gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx.

It has been estimated that the active Irish-language scene probably comprises 5 to 10 per cent of Ireland's population.[53] In the 2011 census, 11% of the population of Northern Ireland claimed "some knowledge of Irish"[54] and 3.7% reported being able to "speak, read, write and understand" Irish.[54] In another survey, from 1999, 1% of respondents said they spoke it as their main language at home.[55]

Further information: Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022

Cornwall Edit

Main articles: Languages of Cornwall, Cornish English, and Cornish language
Further information: Languages of England

Cornish, a Brythonic Celtic language related to Welsh, was spoken in Cornwall throughout the Middle Ages. Its use began to decline from the 14th century, especially after the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549. The language continued to function as a first language in Penwith in the far west of Cornwall until the late 18th century, with the last native speaker thought to have died in 1777.[56]

A revival initiated by Henry Jenner began in 1903. In 2002, the Cornish language was named as a historical regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[33][57] The UN classes it as a critically endangered language.[58]

Principal minority language areas Edit

British Sign Language Edit

Main article: British Sign Language

British Sign Language, often abbreviated to BSL, is the language of 125,000 Deaf adults, about 0.3%[26] of the total population of the United Kingdom. It is not exclusively the language of Deaf people; many relatives of Deaf people and others can communicate in it fluently. Recognised to be a language by the UK Government on 18 March 2003,[62] BSL has the highest number of monolingual users of any indigenous minority language in the UK.[citation needed]

Further information: British Sign Language Act 2022

UK census Edit

Abilities in the regional languages of the UK (other than Cornish) for those aged three and above were recorded in the UK census 2011 as follows.[63][64][65]

Ability Wales Scotland Northern Ireland
Welsh Scottish Gaelic Scots Irish Ulster-Scots
Number % Number % Number % Number % Number %
Understands but does not speak, read or write 157,792 5.15% 23,357 0.46% 267,412 5.22% 70,501 4.06% 92,040 5.30%
Speaks, reads and writes 430,717 14.06% 32,191 0.63% 1,225,622 23.95% 71,996 4.15% 17,228 0.99%
Speaks but does not read or write 80,429 2.63% 18,966 0.37% 179,295 3.50% 24,677 1.42% 10,265 0.59%
Speaks and reads but does not write 45,524 1.49% 6,218 0.12% 132,709 2.59% 7,414 0.43% 7,801 0.45%
Reads but does not speak or write 44,327 1.45% 4,646 0.09% 107,025 2.09% 5,659 0.33% 11,911 0.69%
Other combination of skills 40,692 1.33% 1,678 0.03% 17,381 0.34% 4,651 0.27% 959 0.06%
No skills 2,263,975 73.90% 5,031,167 98.30% 3,188,779 62.30% 1,550,813 89.35% 1,595,507 91.92%
Total 3,063,456 100.00% 5,118,223 100.00% 5,118,223 100.00% 1,735,711 100.00% 1,735,711 100.00%
Can speak 562,016 18.35% 57,602 1.13% 1,541,693 30.12% 104,943 6.05% 35,404 2.04%
Has some ability 799,481 26.10% 87,056 1.70% 1,929,444 37.70% 184,898 10.65% 140,204 8.08%
Distribution of those who stated they could speak a regional language in the 2011 census.

Note: Scale used varies for each map.

  •  

    Welsh

  •  

    Scots

  •  

    Scottish Gaelic

  •  

    Irish

  •  

    Ulster-Scots

Status Edit

Certain nations and regions of the UK have frameworks for the promotion of their autochthonous languages.

The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of:

  • Cornish (in Cornwall)
  • Irish and Ulster Scots (in Northern Ireland)
  • Manx (in the Isle of Man)
  • Scots and Scottish Gaelic (in Scotland)
  • Welsh (in Wales)

Under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (which is not legally enforceable, but which requires states to adopt appropriate legal provision for the use of regional and minority languages) the UK government has committed itself to the recognition of certain regional languages and the promotion of certain linguistic traditions. The UK has ratified[68] for the higher level of protection (Section III) provided for by the Charter in respect of Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish. Cornish, Scots in Scotland and Northern Ireland (in the latter territory officially known as Ulster Scots or Ullans, but in the speech of users simply as Scottish or Scots) are protected by the lower level only (Section II). The UK government has also recognised British Sign Language as a language in its own right[62] of the United Kingdom.

 
In Northern Ireland, the department responsible for culture displays official administrative identity in English, Irish and Ulster Scots

A number of bodies have been established to oversee the promotion of the regional languages: in Scotland, Bòrd na Gàidhlig oversees Scottish Gaelic. Foras na Gaeilge has an all-Ireland remit as a cross-border language body, and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch is intended to fulfil a similar function for Ulster Scots, although hitherto it has mainly concerned itself with culture. In Wales, the Welsh Language Commissioner (Comisiynydd y Gymraeg) is an independent body established to promote and facilitate use of the Welsh language, mainly by imposing Welsh language standards on organisations.[69] The Cornish Language Partnership is a body that represents the major Cornish language and cultural groups and local government's language needs. It receives funding from the UK government and the European Union, and is the regulator of the language's Standard Written Form, agreed in 2008.

Controversies Edit

Language versus dialect Edit

There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of paradigms exist, which give sometimes contradictory results. The distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference.

Scottish Gaelic and Irish are generally viewed as being languages in their own right rather than dialects of a single tongue, but they are sometimes mutually intelligible to a limited degree – especially between southern dialects of Scottish and northern dialects of Irish (programmes in these two forms of Gaelic are broadcast respectively on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta), but the relationship between Scots and English is less clear, since there is usually partial mutual intelligibility.

Since there is a very high level of mutual intelligibility between contemporary speakers of Scots in Scotland and in Ulster (Ulster Scots), and a common written form was current well into the 20th century, the two varieties have usually been considered as dialects of a single tongue rather than languages in their own right; the written forms have diverged in the 21st century. The government of the United Kingdom "recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language".[68] Whether this implies recognition of one regional or minority language or two is a question of interpretation. Ulster Scots is defined in legislation (The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999) as: the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland.[70]

While in continental Europe closely related languages and dialects may get official recognition and support, in the UK there is a tendency to view closely related vernaculars as a single language. Even British Sign Language is mistakenly thought of as a form of 'English' by some, rather than as a language in its own right, with a distinct grammar and vocabulary. The boundaries are not always clear cut, which makes it hard to estimate numbers of speakers.

Hostility Edit

 
Mural in Belfast with Irish phrase Slán Abhaile ("Safe home") directed ironically at departing British soldiers. In modern Northern Ireland, the Irish language is closely tied with Irish republicanism, despite being used historically by many Protestant and unionist communities.

In Northern Ireland, the use of Irish and Ulster Scots is sometimes viewed as politically loaded, despite both having been used by all communities in the past. According to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 1999, the ratio of Unionist to Nationalist users of Ulster Scots is 2:1. About 1% of Catholics claim to speak it, while 2% of Protestants claim to speak it. The disparity in the ratios as determined by political and faith community, despite the very large overlap between the two, reflects the very low numbers of respondents.[71] Across the two communities 0% speak it as their main language at home.[72] A 2:1 ratio would not differ markedly from that among the general population in those areas of Northern Ireland where Scots is spoken.

Often the use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland has met with the considerable suspicion of Unionists, who have associated it with the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland, and more recently, with the republican movement in Northern Ireland itself. Catholic areas of Belfast have street signs in Irish similar to those in the Republic. Approximately 14% of the population speak Irish,[73] however only 1% speak it as their main language at home.[72] Under the St Andrews Agreement, the British government committed itself to introducing an Irish Language Act, and it was hoped that a consultation period ending on 2 March 2007 could see Irish becoming an official language, having equal validity with English, recognised as an indigenous language, or aspire to become an official language in the future.[74] However, with the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007, responsibility for this was passed to the Assembly, and the commitment was promptly broken. In October 2007, the then Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Edwin Poots MLA, announced to the assembly that no Irish Language Act would be brought forward. As of April 2016, no Irish Language Act applying to Northern Ireland has been passed, and none is currently planned.

Some resent Scottish Gaelic being promoted in the Lowlands. Gaelic place names are relatively rare in the extreme south-east (that part of Scotland which had previously been under Northumbrian rule)[75] and the extreme north-east (part of Caithness, where Norse was previously spoken).[76]

Two areas with mostly Norse-derived placenames (and some Pictish), the Northern Isles (Shetland and Orkney) were ceded to Scotland in lieu of an unpaid dowry in 1472, and never spoke Gaelic; its traditional vernacular Norn, a derivative of Old Norse mutually intelligible with Icelandic and Faroese, died out in the 18th century after large-scale immigration by Lowland Scots speakers. To this day, many Shetlanders and Orcadians maintain a separate identity, albeit through the Shetland and Orcadian dialects of Lowland Scots, rather than their former tongue. Norn was also spoken at one point in Caithness, apparently dying out much earlier than Shetland and Orkney. However, the Norse speaking population were entirely assimilated by the Gaelic speaking population in the Western Isles; to what degree this happened in Caithness is a matter of controversy, although Gaelic was spoken in parts of the county until the 20th century.

Non-recognition Edit

Scots within Scotland and the regional varieties of English within England receive little or no official recognition. The dialects of northern England share some features with Scots that those of southern England do not. The regional dialects of England were once extremely varied, as is recorded in Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary and the Survey of English Dialects, but they have died out over time so that regional differences are now largely in pronunciation rather than in grammar or vocabulary.

Public funding of minority languages continues to produce mixed reactions, and there is sometimes resistance to their teaching in schools. Partly as a result, proficiency in languages other than "Standard" English can vary widely.

Immigrant languages Edit

 
'Brick Lane' street sign in English and Bengali, Tower Hamlets, London
 
Sign in English and Punjabi at Southall railway station, Southall, London
 
Bilingual street signs in Chinatown, Liverpool, Merseyside

Communities migrating to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's school children. Current school censuses collect information on over 300 language categories.[77] Data on the total number of languages entered onto national census forms in 2021 (England and Wales and Northern Ireland), and 2022 (Scotland) is not yet published but write in data in 2011 covered over 600 languages and categories.[78]

Many Black Britons speak English as their first language. Their ancestors mostly came from the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, and generally also spoke English-based creole languages,[79] hence there are significant numbers of Caribbean creole speakers (see below for Ethnologue figures). A large proportion of the Black British population, especially African-born immigrants speak French as a first or second language.

British Asians speak dozens of different languages, and it is difficult to determine how many people speak each language alongside English. The largest subgroup of British Asians are those of Punjabi origin (representing approximately two thirds of direct migrants from South Asia to the UK), from both India and Pakistan, they number over 2 million in the UK and are the largest Punjabi community outside of Indo subcontinent.[80] The Punjabi language, with its dialects, is currently the third most spoken language in the United Kingdom.

Among British Pakistanis, Pahari-Pothwari (and particularly Mirpuri) is the most spoken language. Since it is a spoken language lacking a standardised form, Standard Punjabi (Majhi) and Urdu is also used by the community in the media and literature.[81] The Punjabi language movement considers it to be a dialect of Punjabi.[82] There have been efforts by numerous initiatives to document and gain recognition for the language, particularly in wake of the 2021 United Kingdom census.[83] Institutions such as the National Health Service (NHS) have started to provide Pothwari translation services throughout the country.[84][85]

Sylheti is the most spoken language variety (considered as a Bengali dialect) among British Bangladeshis, with around 400,000 speakers.[86] Standard Bengali is spoken by a minority of British Bangladeshis and majority of West Bengalis. The Standardised variant of Bengali is used by the community as a whole particularly in media.[87] Sylheti had been enlisted as part of the list of native languages spoken by students in British schools,[88] and some institutions such as the National Health Service (NHS) provide Sylheti translation services.[89]

Most common immigrant languages Edit

According to the 2021 census, English or Welsh was the main language of 91.1% of the residents of England and Wales. Among other languages, the most common were as follows.

  1. Polish 611,845 or 1.1% of speakers of other languages
  2. Romanian 471,954 or 0.8%
  3. Punjabi (with Punjabi dialects and languages) 290,745 or 0.5%
  4. Urdu 269,849 or 0.5%
  5. Portuguese 224,719 or 0.4%
  6. Spanish 215,062 or 0.4%
  7. Arabic (with Varieties of Arabic) 203,998 or 0.4%
  8. Bengali (with Sylheti and Chatgaya) 199,495 or 0.3%
  9. Gujarati 188,956 or 0.3%
  10. Italian 160,010 or 0.3%
  11. Tamil 125,363 or 0.2%
  12. French 120,259 or 0.2%
  13. Lithuanian 119,656 or 0.2%
  14. Chinese 118,271 or 0.2%
  15. Turkish 112,978 or 0.2%
  16. Bulgarian 111,431 or 0.2%
  17. Russian 91,255 or 0.2%
  18. Persian 87,713 or 0.2%
  19. Hungarian 87,356 or 0.2%
  20. Greek 76,675 or 0.1%

Second or additional languages Edit

Throughout the UK, many citizens can speak, or at least understand (to a degree where they could have a conversation with someone who speaks that language),[clarification needed] a second or even a third language from secondary school education, primary school education or from private classes. 23% of the UK population can speak/understand French, 9% can speak/understand German and 8% can speak/understand Spanish.[12][90]

38% of UK citizens report that they can speak (well enough to have a conversation) at least one language other than their mother tongue, 18% at least two languages and 6% at least three languages. 62% of UK citizens cannot speak any second language.[12] These figures include those who describe their level of ability in the second language as "basic".[12] Due to the dominance of modern English in media and business, English speakers have little exposure to foreign languages and media.

Language teaching is compulsory in all English schools from the ages of 5 or 7. Modern and ancient languages, such as French, German, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Urdu, Mandarin, Russian, Bengali, Hebrew, and Arabic, are studied.[91] Language teaching is compulsory from the ages of 11 or 12 in Scotland and Wales.

Norman French and Latin Edit

 
The signs at Wallsend Metro station are in English and Latin as a tribute to Wallsend's role as one of the outposts of the Roman empire.

Norman French is still used in the Houses of Parliament for certain official business between the clerks of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and on other official occasions such as the dissolution of Parliament.

Latin is also used to a limited degree in certain official mottoes, for example Nemo me impune lacessit, legal terminology (habeas corpus), and various ceremonial contexts. Latin abbreviations can also be seen on British coins. The use of Latin has declined greatly in recent years. However, the Catholic Church retains Latin in official and quasi-official contexts. Latin remains the language of the Roman Rite, and the Tridentine Mass is celebrated in Latin. Although the Mass of Paul VI is usually celebrated in English, it can be and often is said in Latin, in part or whole, especially at multilingual gatherings. It is the official language of the Holy See, the primary language of its public journal, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, and the working language of the Roman Rota.[92]

At one time, Latin and Greek were commonly taught in British schools (and were required for entrance to the ancient universities until 1919, for Greek, and the 1960s, for Latin[93]), and A-Levels and Highers are still available in both subjects.

Extinct languages Edit

Cornish Edit

Main article: Cornish language

Cornish became extinct as a first language in the late 18th century, ceasing to have any fully competent speakers by 1800.[56] Its cultural legacy has continued within Cornwall.[94]

There are small numbers of second-language speakers of revived varieties of Cornish, and these appear in the table of living languages in this article. Many people therefore regard the Cornish language not as "extinct" but as "critically endangered" or by other similar terms.

Norn Edit

Main article: Norn language

A North Germanic once spoken in the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and Caithness. It is likely that the language was dying out in the late 18th century, with the reports putting the last Norn speakers in the 19th century.[95] Walter Sutherland from Skaw in Unst, who died about 1850, has been cited as the last native speaker of the Norn language. The remote islands of Foula and Unst are variously claimed as the last refuges of the language in Shetland, where there were people "who could repeat sentences in Norn, probably passages from folk songs or poems, as late as 1893".[96] Fragments of vocabulary survived the death of the main language and remain to this day, mainly in place-names and terms referring to plants, animals, weather, mood, and fishing vocabulary.

Kentish Sign Edit

Main article: Old Kentish Sign Language

Unrelated to both the Banzsl British Sign Language and Northern Irish SL and the Francosign Irish SL, the sign language spoken in Kent was a unique village sign language that went to sleep and was superseded by BSL in the 17th century. There are fairly weak rumours that Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (one of ASL's substrate languages) descended through Kentish signers, though proper evidence has not yet been substantiated.

Pictish Edit

Main article: Pictish language

Pictish was probably a Brittonic language, or dialect, spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages, which became extinct c.900 AD. There is virtually no direct attestation of Pictish, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the Kingdom of the Picts. Such evidence, however, points to the language being closely related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England and Wales. A minority view held by a few scholars claims that Pictish was at least partially non-Indo-European or that a non-Indo-European and Brittonic language coexisted.

Cumbric Edit

Main article: Cumbric

Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North" in what is now Northern England and southern Lowland Scotland.[97] It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brittonic languages. Place name evidence suggests Cumbric speakers may have carried it into other parts of northern England as migrants from its core area further north.[98] It may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales. Most linguists think that it became extinct in the 12th century, after the incorporation of the semi-independent Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland.

See also Edit

References Edit

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External links Edit

  • Sounds Familiar? — Listen to examples of regional accents and dialects across the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website (uses Windows Media Player for content)

Further reading Edit

  • Trudgill, Peter (ed.), Language in the British Isles, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-28409-0

October 20, 2023
languages, united, kingdom, english, various, dialects, most, widely, spoken, language, united, kingdom, number, regional, migrant, languages, also, spoken, regional, indigenous, languages, scots, ulster, scots, celtic, languages, irish, scottish, gaelic, wels. English in various dialects is the most widely spoken language of the United Kingdom 14 but a number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken Regional indigenous languages are Scots and Ulster Scots and the Celtic languages Irish Scottish Gaelic Welsh and as a revived language with few speakers Cornish British Sign Language is also used There are also many languages spoken by immigrants who arrived recently to the United Kingdom mainly within inner city areas these languages are mainly from continental Europe and South Asia 15 Languages of the United KingdomMultilingual sign in LondonMainEnglish 98 1 national and de facto official a 2 3 4 MinorityScots 2 5 5 Welsh 1 3 6 Cornish lt 0 01 L2 7 8 9 Scottish Gaelic Irish a Ulster Scots 0 05 10 Angloromani Beurla Reagaird SheltaImmigrantPolish Punjabi Hindi Urdu Bengali Gujarati Arabic French Chinese Portuguese Spanish Tamil 11 ForeignFrench 23 German 9 Spanish 8 b 12 SignedBritish Sign Language 0 002 c 13 Irish Sign Language Signed English Northern Ireland Sign LanguageKeyboard layoutBritish QWERTYa Statistics indicate respondents who can speak at least well b Statistics indicate respondents with at least basic ability c Statistics undertaken with assumptions and large disparities between home countries The de facto official language of the United Kingdom is English 16 Additionally Welsh is a de jure official language in Wales 17 18 Welsh is spoken by 538 300 people in Wales according to the 2021 census 19 Approximately 124 000 people speak Irish in Northern Ireland which is an official language in Northern Ireland alongside English 20 Contents 1 List of languages and dialects 1 1 Living 1 1 1 Anglic 1 1 2 Insular Celtic 1 1 3 Mixed 1 1 4 Sign languages 1 2 Extinct 2 Regional languages and statistics 2 1 English 2 2 Wales 2 3 Scotland 2 3 1 Scottish Gaelic Gaidhlig 2 3 2 Scots 2 4 Northern Ireland 2 4 1 Ulster Scots 2 4 2 Irish Gaeilge 2 5 Cornwall 2 6 Principal minority language areas 2 7 British Sign Language 2 8 UK census 3 Status 3 1 Controversies 3 1 1 Language versus dialect 3 1 2 Hostility 3 1 3 Non recognition 4 Immigrant languages 4 1 Most common immigrant languages 5 Second or additional languages 6 Norman French and Latin 7 Extinct languages 7 1 Cornish 7 2 Norn 7 3 Kentish Sign 7 4 Pictish 7 5 Cumbric 8 See also 9 References 10 External links 11 Further readingList of languages and dialects EditLiving Edit The table below outlines living indigenous languages of the United Kingdom England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland The languages of the Crown Dependencies the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not included here Language Type Spoken in Numbers of speakers in the UKEnglish Germanic West Germanic Throughout the United Kingdom 59 824 194 98 2011 census 1 Scots Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland Germanic West Germanic Scotland Scottish Lowlands Caithness Northern Isles and Berwick upon TweedNorthern Ireland Counties Down Antrim Londonderry 2 6 2011 census Scotland 1 541 693 30 21 Northern Ireland 34 439 2 although 8 1 with some ability 10 Welsh Celtic Brythonic Wales especially west and north and parts of England near the Welsh English borderWelsh communities in major English cities such as London Birmingham Manchester and Liverpool 1 123 500 1 7 2019 Wales figures with England Scotland and Northern Ireland estimated figures from 2011 census dubious discuss Wales 874 600 29 2019 22 All skills speaking reading or writing 1 012 500 23 England 110 000 estimated speakers in 2001 24 with 8 200 first language speakers 2011 census 25 Scotland and Northern Ireland 1 000 estimated speakers in 2001 24 British Sign Language BANZSL Throughout the United Kingdom 125 000 26 2010 data Irish Celtic Goidelic Northern Ireland with communities in Glasgow Liverpool Manchester London etc 95 000 27 2004 data Angloromani Mixed Spoken by English Romanichal Traveller communities in England Scotland and Wales 90 000 28 1990 data Scottish Gaelic Celtic Goidelic Scotland Scottish Highlands and Hebrides with substantial minorities in various Scottish cities A small community in London 65 674 total 4 Scotland s 2001 Census though those who have fluency in all three skills is 32 400 29 Cornish Celtic Brythonic Cornwall even smaller minorities of speakers in Plymouth London and South Wales 557 30 2011 data Shelta Mixed Spoken by Irish Traveller communities throughout the United Kingdom Est 30 000 in UK Fewer than 86 000 worldwide 31 Irish Sign Language Francosign Northern Ireland UnknownNorthern Ireland Sign Language BANZSL Northern Ireland UnknownAnglic Edit Further information Anglic languages nbsp Street sign in Ballywalter Northern Ireland in English and Ulster ScotsBritish English English English as spoken in England Northern English Cheshire dialect Cumbrian Northumbrian Geordie of Newcastle upon Tyne and surrounding area Lancastrian Lancashire northern parts of Greater Manchester eastern parts of Merseyside and surrounding area Mackem of Sunderland and surrounding area Mancunian Greater Manchester Cheshire East and surrounding area Yorkshire Tyke Scouse Liverpool and other parts of Merseyside Cheshire West and surrounding area East Midlands English West Midlands English Black Country of Dudley Wolverhampton Walsall and Sandwell Brummie spoken in Birmingham Potteries North Staffordshire centred on Stoke on Trent Southern English English East Anglian Estuary English London Cockney Multicultural London English West Country dialects Bristol Devon Dorset Somerset also parts of Gloucestershire Wiltshire and Herefordshire Cornish English Scottish English Highland English Welsh English Cardiff dialect additional varieties of which spoken throughout South Wales Hiberno English Ulster English Sign Supported English a sign language based on English not BSL Scots 32 Insular Scots Shetland dialect Orcadian Northern Scots Doric Central Scots Glaswegian Southern Scots Ulster Scots 32 Insular Celtic Edit Further information Insular Celtic languages Brythonic languages Western Brittonic languages Welsh Southwestern Brittonic languages Cornish Goidelic languages Irish 33 Ulster Irish Scottish Gaelic 33 Beurla Reagaird ManxMixed Edit Angloromani Scottish Cant 34 SheltaSign languages Edit BANZSL British Sign Language Northern Ireland Sign Language Francosign Irish Sign LanguageExtinct Edit Insular Celtic Brythonic Cumbric Pictish Goidelic Galwegian Gaelic Anglic Old English Middle English Yola Fingalian Early Scots Middle Scots Nordic Old Norse Norn Indic Romani Welsh Romani Romance Anglo Norman Kentish Sign Old Kentish SignRegional languages and statistics EditDistribution of languages of the United KingdomEnglish 98 Scots 2 5 Welsh 1 Scottish Gaelic 0 1 Irish 0 1 Cornish 0 01 nbsp English language proficiency in England and Wales in 2011 The English category included Welsh for usual residents of Wales nbsp Percentage of English as main language in London 2021English Edit Main article English language This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed March 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message In the 2011 UK census 98 of people over the age of three were reported as speaking English English is a West Germanic language brought around the 5th century CE to the east coast of what is now England by Germanic speaking immigrants from around present day northern Germany who came to be known as the Anglo Saxons The fusion of these settlers dialects became what is now termed Old English the word English is derived from the name of the Angles English soon displaced the previously predominant British Celtic and British Latin throughout most of England It spread into what was to become south east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria Following the economic political military scientific cultural and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century via the British Empire and of the United States since the mid 20th century it has been widely dispersed around the world and become the leading language of international discourse Many English words are based on roots from Latin because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language with Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman French and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give what had now become Middle English the superficial appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English Wales Edit Main articles Welsh English and Welsh language Further information Languages of Wales nbsp Bilingual road markings near Cardiff Airport Vale of GlamorganWelsh Cymraeg emerged in the 6th century from Brittonic the common ancestor of Welsh Breton Cornish and the extinct language known as Cumbric Welsh is thus a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages and is spoken natively in Wales There are also Welsh speakers in Y Wladfa The Colony 35 a Welsh settlement in Argentina which began in 1865 and is situated mainly along the coast of Chubut Province in the south of Patagonia Chubut estimates the number of Patagonian Welsh speakers to be about 1 500 36 Both the English and Welsh languages have official but not always equal status in Wales English has de facto official status everywhere whereas Welsh has limited but still considerable official de jure status in only the public service the judiciary and elsewhere as prescribed in legislation The Welsh language is protected by the Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 and since 1998 it has been common for example for almost all British Government Departments to provide both printed documentation and official websites in both English and Welsh On 7 December 2010 the National Assembly for Wales unanimously approved a set of measures to develop the use of the Welsh language within Wales 37 38 On 9 February 2011 this measure received Royal Assent and was passed thus making the Welsh language an officially recognised language within Wales 39 The Welsh Language Board 40 indicated in 2004 that 553 000 people 19 7 of the population of Wales in households or communal establishments were able to speak Welsh Based on an alternative definition there has been a 0 9 percentage point increase when compared with the 2001 census and an increase of approximately 35 000 in absolute numbers within Wales Welsh is therefore a growing language within Wales 40 Of those 553 000 Welsh speakers 57 315 000 were considered by others to be fluent and 477 000 people consider themselves fluent or fair speakers 62 of speakers 340 000 claimed to speak the language daily including 88 of fluent speakers 40 However there is some controversy over the actual number who speak Welsh some statistics include people who have studied Welsh to GCSE standard many of whom could not be regarded as fluent speakers of the language Conversely some first language speakers may choose not to report themselves as such These phenomena also seen with other minority languages outside the UK make it harder to establish an accurate and unbiased figure for how many people speak it fluently Furthermore no question about Welsh language ability was asked in the 2001 census outside Wales thereby ignoring a considerable population of Welsh speakers particularly concentrated in neighbouring English counties and in London and other large cities It is estimated that 110 000 to 150 000 people in England speak Welsh 24 41 Nevertheless the 2011 census recorded an overall reduction in Welsh speakers from 582 000 in 2001 to 562 000 in 2011 despite an increase in the size of the population a 2 drop from 21 to 19 in the proportion of Welsh speakers 42 Scotland Edit Main articles Scottish English Scots language and Scottish Gaelic Further information Languages of Scotland Scottish Gaelic Gaidhlig Edit nbsp Bilingual sign Scottish Gaelic and English at Partick railway station GlasgowMain article Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages Scottish Gaelic like Modern Irish and Manx developed out of Middle Irish and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish Outside Scotland a dialect of the language known as Canadian Gaelic exists in Canada on Cape Breton Island and isolated areas of the Nova Scotia mainland This variety has around 2000 speakers amounting to 1 3 of the population of Cape Breton Island The 2011 census of Scotland showed that a total of 57 375 people 1 1 of the Scottish population aged over three years old in Scotland could speak Gaelic at that time with the Outer Hebrides being the main stronghold of the language The census results indicate a decline of 1 275 Gaelic speakers from 2001 A total of 87 056 people in 2011 reported having some facility with Gaelic compared to 93 282 people in 2001 a decline of 6 226 43 44 Despite this decline revival efforts exist and the number of speakers of the language under age 20 has increased 45 The Gaelic language was given official recognition for the first time in Scotland in 2005 by the Scottish Parliament s Gaelic Language Scotland Act 2005 which aims to promote the Gaelic language to a status commanding equal respect with English However this wording has no clear meaning in law and was chosen to prevent the assumption that the Gaelic language is in any way considered to have equal validity or parity of esteem with English 46 A major limitation of the act though is that it does not constitute any form of recognition for the Gaelic language by the UK government and UK public bodies operating in Scotland as reserved bodies are explicitly exempted from its provisions 47 Scots Edit Main article Scots language The Scots language originated from Northumbrian Old English The Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria stretched from south Yorkshire to the Firth of Forth from where the Scottish elite continued the language shift northwards Since there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic historical and social status of Scots Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist these often render contradictory results Focused broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum with Scottish Standard English at the other Consequently Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English but with its own distinct dialects Alternatively Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language in the way Norwegian is closely linked to yet distinct from Danish The 2011 UK census was the first to ask residents of Scotland about Scots A campaign called Aye Can was set up to help individuals answer the question 48 49 The specific wording used was Which of these can you do Tick all that apply with options for Understand Speak Read and Write in three columns English Scottish Gaelic and Scots 50 Of approximately 5 1 million respondents about 1 2 million 24 could speak read and write Scots 3 2 million 62 had no skills in Scots and the remainder had some degree of skill such as understanding Scots 0 27 million 5 2 or being able to speak it but not read or write it 0 18 million 3 5 51 There were also small numbers of Scots speakers recorded in England and Wales on the 2011 Census with the largest numbers being either in bordering areas e g Carlisle or in areas that had recruited large numbers of Scottish workers in the past e g Corby or the former mining areas of Kent 52 Northern Ireland Edit Main articles Languages of Northern Ireland Irish language Irish language in Northern Ireland and Ulster Irish Further information Languages of Ireland Ulster Scots Edit Main article Ulster Scots dialects 2 speak Ulster Scots seen by some as a language distinct from English and by some as a dialect of English according to the 1999 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey around 30 000 speakers Some definitions of Ulster Scots may also include Standard English spoken with an Ulster Scots accent The language was brought to Ireland by Scottish planters from the 16th Century Irish Gaeilge Edit Main articles Irish language in Northern Ireland and Ulster Irish Further information Irish language nbsp Bilingual sign Irish and English in NewryIrish was the predominant language of the Irish people for most of their recorded history and they brought their Gaelic speech with them to other countries notably Scotland and the Isle of Man where it gave rise to Scottish Gaelic and Manx It has been estimated that the active Irish language scene probably comprises 5 to 10 per cent of Ireland s population 53 In the 2011 census 11 of the population of Northern Ireland claimed some knowledge of Irish 54 and 3 7 reported being able to speak read write and understand Irish 54 In another survey from 1999 1 of respondents said they spoke it as their main language at home 55 Further information Identity and Language Northern Ireland Act 2022 Cornwall Edit Main articles Languages of Cornwall Cornish English and Cornish language Further information Languages of England Cornish a Brythonic Celtic language related to Welsh was spoken in Cornwall throughout the Middle Ages Its use began to decline from the 14th century especially after the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549 The language continued to function as a first language in Penwith in the far west of Cornwall until the late 18th century with the last native speaker thought to have died in 1777 56 A revival initiated by Henry Jenner began in 1903 In 2002 the Cornish language was named as a historical regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages 33 57 The UN classes it as a critically endangered language 58 Principal minority language areas Edit Welsh North West Wales Percentage of speakers 69 76 understand Welsh Population Gwynedd 118 400 2001 census Scottish Gaelic Outer Hebrides Percentage of speakers 61 Population Na h Eileanan Siar 27 400 59 In the 2001 census each island overall was over 50 Gaelic speaking South Uist 71 Harris 69 Barra 68 North Uist 67 Lewis 56 and Benbecula 56 With 59 3 of Gaelic speakers or a total of 15 723 speakers this made the Outer Hebrides the most strongly coherent Gaelic speaking area in Scotland 60 61 British Sign Language Edit Main article British Sign Language British Sign Language often abbreviated to BSL is the language of 125 000 Deaf adults about 0 3 26 of the total population of the United Kingdom It is not exclusively the language of Deaf people many relatives of Deaf people and others can communicate in it fluently Recognised to be a language by the UK Government on 18 March 2003 62 BSL has the highest number of monolingual users of any indigenous minority language in the UK citation needed Further information British Sign Language Act 2022 UK census Edit Abilities in the regional languages of the UK other than Cornish for those aged three and above were recorded in the UK census 2011 as follows 63 64 65 Ability Wales Scotland Northern IrelandWelsh Scottish Gaelic Scots Irish Ulster ScotsNumber Number Number Number Number Understands but does not speak read or write 157 792 5 15 23 357 0 46 267 412 5 22 70 501 4 06 92 040 5 30 Speaks reads and writes 430 717 14 06 32 191 0 63 1 225 622 23 95 71 996 4 15 17 228 0 99 Speaks but does not read or write 80 429 2 63 18 966 0 37 179 295 3 50 24 677 1 42 10 265 0 59 Speaks and reads but does not write 45 524 1 49 6 218 0 12 132 709 2 59 7 414 0 43 7 801 0 45 Reads but does not speak or write 44 327 1 45 4 646 0 09 107 025 2 09 5 659 0 33 11 911 0 69 Other combination of skills 40 692 1 33 1 678 0 03 17 381 0 34 4 651 0 27 959 0 06 No skills 2 263 975 73 90 5 031 167 98 30 3 188 779 62 30 1 550 813 89 35 1 595 507 91 92 Total 3 063 456 100 00 5 118 223 100 00 5 118 223 100 00 1 735 711 100 00 1 735 711 100 00 Can speak 562 016 18 35 57 602 1 13 1 541 693 30 12 104 943 6 05 35 404 2 04 Has some ability 799 481 26 10 87 056 1 70 1 929 444 37 70 184 898 10 65 140 204 8 08 Distribution of those who stated they could speak a regional language in the 2011 census Note Scale used varies for each map nbsp Welsh nbsp Scots nbsp Scottish Gaelic nbsp Irish nbsp Ulster ScotsStatus EditCertain nations and regions of the UK have frameworks for the promotion of their autochthonous languages In Wales the Welsh Language Act 1993 requires English and Welsh to be treated equally throughout the public sector This was further enforced through the passing of the Welsh Language Wales Measure 2011 66 67 In Scotland the Gaelic Language Scotland Act 2005 gave the Scottish Gaelic language its first statutory basis and the Western Isles region of Scotland has a policy to promote the language In Northern Ireland the Identity and Language Northern Ireland Act 2022 will provide official recognition of the status of the Irish language in addition to English with Ulster Scots as an officially recognised minority language The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of Cornish in Cornwall Irish and Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland Manx in the Isle of Man Scots and Scottish Gaelic in Scotland Welsh in Wales Under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages which is not legally enforceable but which requires states to adopt appropriate legal provision for the use of regional and minority languages the UK government has committed itself to the recognition of certain regional languages and the promotion of certain linguistic traditions The UK has ratified 68 for the higher level of protection Section III provided for by the Charter in respect of Welsh Scottish Gaelic and Irish Cornish Scots in Scotland and Northern Ireland in the latter territory officially known as Ulster Scots or Ullans but in the speech of users simply as Scottish or Scots are protected by the lower level only Section II The UK government has also recognised British Sign Language as a language in its own right 62 of the United Kingdom nbsp In Northern Ireland the department responsible for culture displays official administrative identity in English Irish and Ulster ScotsA number of bodies have been established to oversee the promotion of the regional languages in Scotland Bord na Gaidhlig oversees Scottish Gaelic Foras na Gaeilge has an all Ireland remit as a cross border language body and Tha Boord o Ulster Scotch is intended to fulfil a similar function for Ulster Scots although hitherto it has mainly concerned itself with culture In Wales the Welsh Language Commissioner Comisiynydd y Gymraeg is an independent body established to promote and facilitate use of the Welsh language mainly by imposing Welsh language standards on organisations 69 The Cornish Language Partnership is a body that represents the major Cornish language and cultural groups and local government s language needs It receives funding from the UK government and the European Union and is the regulator of the language s Standard Written Form agreed in 2008 Controversies Edit Language versus dialect Edit There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects although a number of paradigms exist which give sometimes contradictory results The distinction is therefore a subjective one dependent on the user s frame of reference Scottish Gaelic and Irish are generally viewed as being languages in their own right rather than dialects of a single tongue but they are sometimes mutually intelligible to a limited degree especially between southern dialects of Scottish and northern dialects of Irish programmes in these two forms of Gaelic are broadcast respectively on BBC Radio nan Gaidheal and RTE Raidio na Gaeltachta but the relationship between Scots and English is less clear since there is usually partial mutual intelligibility Since there is a very high level of mutual intelligibility between contemporary speakers of Scots in Scotland and in Ulster Ulster Scots and a common written form was current well into the 20th century the two varieties have usually been considered as dialects of a single tongue rather than languages in their own right the written forms have diverged in the 21st century The government of the United Kingdom recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter s definition of a regional or minority language 68 Whether this implies recognition of one regional or minority language or two is a question of interpretation Ulster Scots is defined in legislation The North South Co operation Implementation Bodies Northern Ireland Order 1999 as the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland 70 While in continental Europe closely related languages and dialects may get official recognition and support in the UK there is a tendency to view closely related vernaculars as a single language Even British Sign Language is mistakenly thought of as a form of English by some rather than as a language in its own right with a distinct grammar and vocabulary The boundaries are not always clear cut which makes it hard to estimate numbers of speakers Hostility Edit nbsp Mural in Belfast with Irish phrase Slan Abhaile Safe home directed ironically at departing British soldiers In modern Northern Ireland the Irish language is closely tied with Irish republicanism despite being used historically by many Protestant and unionist communities In Northern Ireland the use of Irish and Ulster Scots is sometimes viewed as politically loaded despite both having been used by all communities in the past According to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 1999 the ratio of Unionist to Nationalist users of Ulster Scots is 2 1 About 1 of Catholics claim to speak it while 2 of Protestants claim to speak it The disparity in the ratios as determined by political and faith community despite the very large overlap between the two reflects the very low numbers of respondents 71 Across the two communities 0 speak it as their main language at home 72 A 2 1 ratio would not differ markedly from that among the general population in those areas of Northern Ireland where Scots is spoken Often the use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland has met with the considerable suspicion of Unionists who have associated it with the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland and more recently with the republican movement in Northern Ireland itself Catholic areas of Belfast have street signs in Irish similar to those in the Republic Approximately 14 of the population speak Irish 73 however only 1 speak it as their main language at home 72 Under the St Andrews Agreement the British government committed itself to introducing an Irish Language Act and it was hoped that a consultation period ending on 2 March 2007 could see Irish becoming an official language having equal validity with English recognised as an indigenous language or aspire to become an official language in the future 74 However with the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007 responsibility for this was passed to the Assembly and the commitment was promptly broken In October 2007 the then Minister of Culture Arts and Leisure Edwin Poots MLA announced to the assembly that no Irish Language Act would be brought forward As of April 2016 no Irish Language Act applying to Northern Ireland has been passed and none is currently planned Some resent Scottish Gaelic being promoted in the Lowlands Gaelic place names are relatively rare in the extreme south east that part of Scotland which had previously been under Northumbrian rule 75 and the extreme north east part of Caithness where Norse was previously spoken 76 Two areas with mostly Norse derived placenames and some Pictish the Northern Isles Shetland and Orkney were ceded to Scotland in lieu of an unpaid dowry in 1472 and never spoke Gaelic its traditional vernacular Norn a derivative of Old Norse mutually intelligible with Icelandic and Faroese died out in the 18th century after large scale immigration by Lowland Scots speakers To this day many Shetlanders and Orcadians maintain a separate identity albeit through the Shetland and Orcadian dialects of Lowland Scots rather than their former tongue Norn was also spoken at one point in Caithness apparently dying out much earlier than Shetland and Orkney However the Norse speaking population were entirely assimilated by the Gaelic speaking population in the Western Isles to what degree this happened in Caithness is a matter of controversy although Gaelic was spoken in parts of the county until the 20th century Non recognition Edit Scots within Scotland and the regional varieties of English within England receive little or no official recognition The dialects of northern England share some features with Scots that those of southern England do not The regional dialects of England were once extremely varied as is recorded in Joseph Wright s English Dialect Dictionary and the Survey of English Dialects but they have died out over time so that regional differences are now largely in pronunciation rather than in grammar or vocabulary Public funding of minority languages continues to produce mixed reactions and there is sometimes resistance to their teaching in schools Partly as a result proficiency in languages other than Standard English can vary widely Immigrant languages Edit nbsp Brick Lane street sign in English and Bengali Tower Hamlets London nbsp Sign in English and Punjabi at Southall railway station Southall London nbsp Bilingual street signs in Chinatown Liverpool MerseysideCommunities migrating to the UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 100 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city s school children Current school censuses collect information on over 300 language categories 77 Data on the total number of languages entered onto national census forms in 2021 England and Wales and Northern Ireland and 2022 Scotland is not yet published but write in data in 2011 covered over 600 languages and categories 78 Many Black Britons speak English as their first language Their ancestors mostly came from the West Indies particularly Jamaica and generally also spoke English based creole languages 79 hence there are significant numbers of Caribbean creole speakers see below for Ethnologue figures A large proportion of the Black British population especially African born immigrants speak French as a first or second language British Asians speak dozens of different languages and it is difficult to determine how many people speak each language alongside English The largest subgroup of British Asians are those of Punjabi origin representing approximately two thirds of direct migrants from South Asia to the UK from both India and Pakistan they number over 2 million in the UK and are the largest Punjabi community outside of Indo subcontinent 80 The Punjabi language with its dialects is currently the third most spoken language in the United Kingdom Among British Pakistanis Pahari Pothwari and particularly Mirpuri is the most spoken language Since it is a spoken language lacking a standardised form Standard Punjabi Majhi and Urdu is also used by the community in the media and literature 81 The Punjabi language movement considers it to be a dialect of Punjabi 82 There have been efforts by numerous initiatives to document and gain recognition for the language particularly in wake of the 2021 United Kingdom census 83 Institutions such as the National Health Service NHS have started to provide Pothwari translation services throughout the country 84 85 Sylheti is the most spoken language variety considered as a Bengali dialect among British Bangladeshis with around 400 000 speakers 86 Standard Bengali is spoken by a minority of British Bangladeshis and majority of West Bengalis The Standardised variant of Bengali is used by the community as a whole particularly in media 87 Sylheti had been enlisted as part of the list of native languages spoken by students in British schools 88 and some institutions such as the National Health Service NHS provide Sylheti translation services 89 Most common immigrant languages Edit According to the 2021 census English or Welsh was the main language of 91 1 of the residents of England and Wales Among other languages the most common were as follows Polish 611 845 or 1 1 of speakers of other languages Romanian 471 954 or 0 8 Punjabi with Punjabi dialects and languages 290 745 or 0 5 Urdu 269 849 or 0 5 Portuguese 224 719 or 0 4 Spanish 215 062 or 0 4 Arabic with Varieties of Arabic 203 998 or 0 4 Bengali with Sylheti and Chatgaya 199 495 or 0 3 Gujarati 188 956 or 0 3 Italian 160 010 or 0 3 Tamil 125 363 or 0 2 French 120 259 or 0 2 Lithuanian 119 656 or 0 2 Chinese 118 271 or 0 2 Turkish 112 978 or 0 2 Bulgarian 111 431 or 0 2 Russian 91 255 or 0 2 Persian 87 713 or 0 2 Hungarian 87 356 or 0 2 Greek 76 675 or 0 1 Second or additional languages EditThroughout the UK many citizens can speak or at least understand to a degree where they could have a conversation with someone who speaks that language clarification needed a second or even a third language from secondary school education primary school education or from private classes 23 of the UK population can speak understand French 9 can speak understand German and 8 can speak understand Spanish 12 90 38 of UK citizens report that they can speak well enough to have a conversation at least one language other than their mother tongue 18 at least two languages and 6 at least three languages 62 of UK citizens cannot speak any second language 12 These figures include those who describe their level of ability in the second language as basic 12 Due to the dominance of modern English in media and business English speakers have little exposure to foreign languages and media Language teaching is compulsory in all English schools from the ages of 5 or 7 Modern and ancient languages such as French German Spanish Latin Greek Urdu Mandarin Russian Bengali Hebrew and Arabic are studied 91 Language teaching is compulsory from the ages of 11 or 12 in Scotland and Wales Norman French and Latin Edit nbsp The signs at Wallsend Metro station are in English and Latin as a tribute to Wallsend s role as one of the outposts of the Roman empire Norman French is still used in the Houses of Parliament for certain official business between the clerks of the House of Commons and the House of Lords and on other official occasions such as the dissolution of Parliament Latin is also used to a limited degree in certain official mottoes for example Nemo me impune lacessit legal terminology habeas corpus and various ceremonial contexts Latin abbreviations can also be seen on British coins The use of Latin has declined greatly in recent years However the Catholic Church retains Latin in official and quasi official contexts Latin remains the language of the Roman Rite and the Tridentine Mass is celebrated in Latin Although the Mass of Paul VI is usually celebrated in English it can be and often is said in Latin in part or whole especially at multilingual gatherings It is the official language of the Holy See the primary language of its public journal the Acta Apostolicae Sedis and the working language of the Roman Rota 92 At one time Latin and Greek were commonly taught in British schools and were required for entrance to the ancient universities until 1919 for Greek and the 1960s for Latin 93 and A Levels and Highers are still available in both subjects Extinct languages EditCornish Edit Main article Cornish language Cornish became extinct as a first language in the late 18th century ceasing to have any fully competent speakers by 1800 56 Its cultural legacy has continued within Cornwall 94 There are small numbers of second language speakers of revived varieties of Cornish and these appear in the table of living languages in this article Many people therefore regard the Cornish language not as extinct but as critically endangered or by other similar terms Norn Edit Main article Norn language A North Germanic once spoken in the Shetland Islands Orkney Islands and Caithness It is likely that the language was dying out in the late 18th century with the reports putting the last Norn speakers in the 19th century 95 Walter Sutherland from Skaw in Unst who died about 1850 has been cited as the last native speaker of the Norn language The remote islands of Foula and Unst are variously claimed as the last refuges of the language in Shetland where there were people who could repeat sentences in Norn probably passages from folk songs or poems as late as 1893 96 Fragments of vocabulary survived the death of the main language and remain to this day mainly in place names and terms referring to plants animals weather mood and fishing vocabulary Kentish Sign Edit Main article Old Kentish Sign Language Unrelated to both the Banzsl British Sign Language and Northern Irish SL and the Francosign Irish SL the sign language spoken in Kent was a unique village sign language that went to sleep and was superseded by BSL in the 17th century There are fairly weak rumours that Martha s Vineyard Sign Language one of ASL s substrate languages descended through Kentish signers though proper evidence has not yet been substantiated Pictish Edit Main article Pictish language Pictish was probably a Brittonic language or dialect spoken by the Picts the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages which became extinct c 900 AD There is virtually no direct attestation of Pictish short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the Kingdom of the Picts Such evidence however points to the language being closely related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland England and Wales A minority view held by a few scholars claims that Pictish was at least partially non Indo European or that a non Indo European and Brittonic language coexisted Cumbric Edit Main article Cumbric Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or Old North in what is now Northern England and southern Lowland Scotland 97 It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brittonic languages Place name evidence suggests Cumbric speakers may have carried it into other parts of northern England as migrants from its core area further north 98 It may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales Most linguists think that it became extinct in the 12th century after the incorporation of the semi independent Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland See also Edit nbsp United Kingdom portal nbsp Languages portalBritish Overseas Territories Languages Literature in the other languages of Britain Regional accents of English speakers British English British literature Languages of the European Union European languages Celtic languages History of the Scots language Gaelic road signs in Scotland Beurla Reagaird Polari Pidgin EnglishReferences Edit a b According to the 2011 census 53 098 301 people in England and Wales 5 044 683 people in Scotland and 1 681 210 people in 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content Further reading EditTrudgill Peter ed Language in the British Isles Cambridge University Press 1984 ISBN 0 521 28409 0 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Languages of the United Kingdom amp oldid 1175395021, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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