Languages of Northern Ireland - Immigrant Languages

Immigrant Languages

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.

South Asians in the United Kingdom 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 South Asia. The Punjabi language is currently the second most spoken language in the UK. 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, hence there are significant numbers of Caribbean creole speakers (see below for Ethnologue figures). With over 300,000 French-born people in the UK, plus the general popularity of the language, French is understood by 23% of the country's population. A large proportion of the Black British population, especially African-born immigrants speak French as a first or second language.

The Bengali speaking community in the UK consists of those largely of Bangladeshi origin mainly from the Sylhet region (predominantly Muslim), and small numbers of Indians from the West Bengal region (mainly Hindu). There are around 700,000 Bengali speakers, 550,000 of whom speak Sylheti, which is either considered a dialect of Bengali or a separate language. West Bengals mainly speak the standard Bengali language, whereas Bangladeshis mainly speak Sylheti which does not have a written form, however children may have received medium education on standard Bengali at school. Sylheti is not recognised as a language in Bangladesh, and there some debate to whether it should be recognised as a separate language from Bengali. The Bengali speaking community in the UK is highly concentrated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.