There is no official source giving a detailed breakdown of how
many people in the UK have English as a second language or the
ranking of community languages spoken in the UK.
- In 2001, the Department for
Education and Skills (then DfEE) commissioned a report looking at
the needs of people whose first language is not English focusing on
barriers to employment, education and training. They reported
"there are no reliable data on the number of people living in Great
Britain whose first language is not English. This causes serious
problems with the planning and delivery of education and training
provision... At least three million people living in the United
Kingdom were born in countries where English is not the national
language".
Source: Research Brief RBX3/01
- The lack of language data
was also highlighted more recently in the context of health service
users, Language
ability: A neglected dimension in the profiling of populations and
health service users, Health Education Journal, Vol. 66, No. 1,
90-106 (2007), Peter J Aspinall, Centre for Health Services
Studies, University of Kent.
We are interested to
discover more about demand for this information. Please let us know
your reasons for understanding which languages are spoken in the UK
population by
emailing us. This will help us to build up a case for ensuring
future language questions in population surveys.
Outlined below are some of
the sources we have identified as trying to capture indications of
the linguistic diversity of the population.