Knowledge
| Language | is spoken as a mother tongue in: * | L1 | L2 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta | 13% | 38% | 51% |
| German | Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, France, Denmark, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary |
18% | 14% | 32% |
| French | France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy | 12% | 14% | 26% |
| Italian | Italy, Slovenia, France and Malta | 13% | 3% | 16% |
| Spanish | Spain | 9% | 6% | 15% |
| Polish | Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia | 9% | 1% | 10% |
| Russian | Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Greece | 1% | 6% | 7% |
| Dutch | Netherlands, Belgium and France | 5% | 1% | 6% |
| Swedish | Sweden and Finland | 2% | 1% | 3% |
| Greek | Greece, Cyprus and Italy | 3% | 0% | 3% |
| Czech | Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia | 2% | 1% | 3% |
| Hungarian | Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Austria | 2% | 0% | 2% |
| Portuguese | Portugal | 2% | 0% | 2% |
| Catalan | Spain, France and Italy | 1% | 1% | 2% |
| Slovak | Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary | 1% | 1% | 2% |
1
After January 1, 2007, Romanian and Bulgarian languages also became language of the European Union with a weighting of 5% and 2%
At 18% of the total number of speakers, German is the most widely spoken mother tongue, while English is the most widely spoken language at 51%. 100% of Hungarians, 100% of Portuguese, and 99.5% of Greeks speak their state language as their mother tongue.
The knowledge of foreign languages varies considerably in the specific countries, as the table below shows. The five most spoken second or foreign languages in the EU are English, German, French, Russian, and Spanish, followed by Italian. In the table, boxes coloured light blue mean that the language is an official language of the country, while the main language spoken in the country is coloured dark blue.
| Country (EU27) |
English | German | French | Spanish | Italian | Russian | Polish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 73% | 4% | 11% | 4% | 9% | 2% | 1% |
| Belgium1 | 52% | 22% | 85% | 5% | 4% | 1% | 0% |
| Bulgaria | 25% | 8% | 2% | 2% | 1% | 23% | 0% |
| Cyprus | 73% | 2% | 7% | 2% | 3% | 4% | 0% |
| Czech Republic | 27% | 15% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 13% | 2% |
| Denmark | 86% | 47% | 9% | 4% | 1% | 0% | 0% |
| Estonia | 50% | 15% | 1% | 1% | 0% | 56%2 | 0% |
| Finland | 70% | 18% | 5% | 3% | 1% | 3% | 0% |
| France | 39% | 6% | 4% | 13% | 5% | 0% | 1% |
| Germany | 56% | 10% | 14% | 4% | 3% | 6% | 1% |
| Greece | 51% | 5% | 9% | 1% | 3% | 1% | 0% |
| Hungary | 20% | 18% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 3% | 0% |
| Ireland | 6% | 6% | 17% | 4% | 1% | 1% | 1% |
| Italy | 34% | 5% | 16% | 11% | 1% | 0% | 0% |
| Latvia | 46% | 14% | 1% | 1% | 0% | 67%3 | 2% |
| Lithuania | 38% | 14% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 80% | 12% |
| Luxembourg | 56% | 69% | 80% | 5% | 6% | 0% | 0% |
| Malta | 89% | 3% | 11% | 1% | 56% | 0% | 0% |
| Netherlands | 90% | 71% | 29% | 5% | 2% | 0% | 0% |
| Poland | 33% | 19% | 4% | 1% | 2% | 18% | 1% |
| Portugal | 27% | 1% | 15% | 10% | 1% | 0% | 0% |
| Romania | 31% | 5% | 17% | 5% | 7% | 3% | 0% |
| Slovakia | 26% | 22% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 17% | 5% |
| Slovenia | 59% | 42% | 3% | 3% | 12% | 3% | 0% |
| Spain | 22% | 2% | 9% | 16% | 2% | 0% | 0% |
| Sweden | 86% | 26% | 9% | 5% | 2% | 0% | 1% |
| United Kingdom | 10% | 6% | 19% | 6% | 2% | 2% | 0% |
56% of citizens in the EU member states are able to hold a conversation in one language apart from their mother tongue. This is nine points higher than reported in 2001 among the 15 member states at the time . 28% of the respondents state that they speak two foreign languages well enough to have a conversation. Almost half of the respondents—44%—do not know any other language than their mother tongue. Approximately 1 in 5 Europeans can be described as an active language learner (i.e., someone who has recently improved his/her language skills or intends to do so over the following 12 months).
English remains by far the most widely spoken foreign language throughout Europe. 95% of students in the EU study English at secondary level and 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation (excluding citizens of the United Kingdom and Ireland, the two English-speaking countries). 28% of Europeans indicate that they know either French (14%) or German (14%), along with their mother tongue. French is most commonly studied and used in southern Europe, especially in Mediterranean countries, in Germany, Portugal, Romania, the U.K., and Ireland. German, on the other hand, is commonly studied and used in the Benelux countries, in Scandinavia, and in the newer EU member states. Spanish is most commonly studied in France, Italy, Luxembourg, and Portugal. In 19 out of 29 countries polled, English is the most widely known language apart from the mother tongue, this being particularly the case in Sweden (89%), Malta (88%); the Netherlands (87%); and Denmark (86%). 77% of EU citizens believe that children should learn English. English was considered the number one language to learn in all countries where the research was conducted except for the United Kingdom, Ireland and Luxembourg. English, either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language, is spoken by 51% of EU citizens, followed by German with 32% and French with 26%.
With the enlargement of the European Union, the balance between French and German is slowly changing. More citizens in the new member states speak German (23% compared with 12% in the EU15) while fewer speak French or Spanish (3% and 1% respectively compared with 16% and 7% among the EU15 group). A notable exception is Romania, where 24% of the population speaks French as a foreign language compared to 6% who speak German as a foreign language. At the same time, the balance is being changed in the opposite direction by growth of the French-speaking population and decrease of the German-speaking population.
Language skills are unevenly distributed both over the geographical area of Europe and over sociodemographic groups. Reasonably good language competences are perceived in relatively small member states with several state languages, lesser used native languages or "language exchange" with neighbouring countries. This is the case in Luxembourg, where 92% speak at least two languages. Those who live in southern European countries or countries where one of the major European languages is a state language have a lower likelihood of speaking multiple foreign languages. Only 5% of Turkish, 13% of Irish, 16% of Italians, 17% of Spanish and 18% from the U.K. speak at least two languages apart from their mother tongue.
Free language lessons (26%), flexible language courses that suit one’s schedule (18%), and opportunities to learn languages in a country where it is spoken natively (17%) are cited as the main incentives encouraging language learning. Group lessons with a teacher (20%), language lessons at school (18%), “one-to-one” lessons with a teacher, and long or frequent visits to a country where the language is spoken are considered to be the most suitable ways to learn languages.
Read more about this topic: Languages Of The European Union
Famous quotes containing the word knowledge:
“The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)
“All observations point to the fact that the intellectual woman is masculinized; in her, warm, intuitive knowledge has yielded to cold unproductive thinking.”
—Helene Deutsch (1884–1982)
“We didn’t come to dig in Egypt for medals. Much more is learned from studying bits of broken pottery than from all the sensational finds. Our job is to increase the sum of human knowledge of the past, not to satisfy our own curiosity.”
—John L. Balderston (1899–1954)