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With over 58 million speakers, English is the de facto national language of the United Kingdom, meaning that it is not recognized as the official language by law, but simply due to the fact that the country overwhelmingly speaks the language. It wasn’t always this way, however: for a few centuries after the Norman Invasion of 1066, French was the primary language spoken by the government and the upper class, whereas English was mainly present among the lower classes. Today, over 98% of UK residents speak English, while only 31% speak at least two languages, making the UK the third least-likely European country to speak a foreign language. Despite the fact that English has a clear linguistic dominance in the UK, it is far from the only language spoken by its residents, with a number of languages and dialects having shaped the country due to its proximity to Europe and long history of colonialism. English is most strongly represented in England, despite being spoken nearly everywhere in the country, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The areas where minority languages are most likely to be encountered are Wales and northern Scotland, which have their own regional languages. Before the French or the Germanic people came to the British Isles, there were certain languages spoken by the people already, and a few of them still exist in various forms to this day. One of these is the Scots language, which is the most popular language after English, spoken by 1.5 million people in Scotland. People who speak Scots generally learned it as a second language (with the first being English), however Scots is kept as it contributes to the national identity of Scotland. After Scots, the most commonly spoken language, with 560,000 speakers, is Welsh. Welsh is the only language in the UK which has a legal status, and it is treated as equal to English in the country, meaning that it’s used by the government and all public services have signs in both languages. Only 19% of Wales’ population actually speaks Welsh, however, as compared to the 99% of those who speak English, with the number of Welsh speakers actually declining. Due to the law, however, it is unlikely that Welsh is ever going to go completely extinct. Some of the other minor indigenous languages are Angloromani, Scottish Gaelic, Shelta, Irish and Cornish.
Along with these, the UK is home to 4.2 million speakers of various immigrant languages, due to the fact that the country has been a hub of immigration in Europe for as long as it has existed, particularly for people from regions of India and Pakistan. The biggest immigrant language is Polish, however, with over half a million speakers. The reason for this is largely due to the opening of borders to Poland after the country joined the European Union in 2004. In the following years, the UK stayed very open to immigrants, leading to an influx of other languages spoken in the country. The next most-spoken immigrant languages all come from India and Pakistan: Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati. Again, this is mainly due to England’s strong presence in India during the 19th and 20th centuries. The other most-spoken languages in the UK after that include Arabic, French, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish.
French is recognized by its constitution as the official language in the country. The government primarily communicates in French, as well as the 88% of the population who speaks it as their first language. Over the years, France has worked hard to promote the French language, and it even established the regulating body of the Académie Française in 1635 to protect and promote it. However, its relationship to its own regional languages is more complex as there are many regional languages that have been spoken inside France for at least as long, or even longer than French, and yet they still remain largely unrecognized. France is a signatory of an European Treaty adopted in 1992 whose goal is to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe, however it has still not ratified it. Therefore, most of those who speak minority languages also speak French, given that the regional and minority languages are given no to very limited legal recognition.
Apart from French, other commonly spoken languages are English, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic and Portuguese. Several languages spoken in different regions of France had their origin from the Germanic, Celtic and Gallo-Romance dialects, such as Breton, Corsican, Occitan, Gascon, Auvergnat and Norma. Breton is spoken by approximately 200,000 people, most of them residing in Brittany, where the language originated. For 300 years it was used by the French upper classes, after which it lost its prevalence to French and Latin. Today, it can only be heard in some regions in Lower Brittany. Corsican is otherwise known as lingua corsa, and it was an official language of Corsica until the mid-19th century. It was influenced by Tuscan, Italian and French, and has developed into several dialects which vary through Corsica and Northern Sardinia. It is currently spoken by less than 200,000 people, and it is being taught in schools and popularized by local media. Occitan is spoken in southern France, northern Spain and Italy’s Occitan Valley. These different dialects may resemble each other, however the differences between them can be significant. Gascon has about 250,000 speakers and is mostly spoken in the southwest of France. Due to the geographical proximity to Spain, it has some ties to the Basque language. Auvergnat is spoken in the historical province of Auvernhat in the south of France. A recent study revealed that over 80% of the residents understood the local dialect, and its popularity is rising, especially among the younger generation. Norma is mainly spoken in Normandy by about 100,000 people.
Other minority languages in France include Gallo, Basque, Languedocien, as well as Polish, Turkish, Dutch, Romanian, Chinese, Catalan, Croatian and Galician. Many of these languages are native – such as Gallo, Languedocien and Galician – and are actually thought to be nearing extinction.
Among its 10 provinces, there is a fair amount of linguistic diversity in Canada, particularly in large cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, which are swarming with languages from all over the world. English and French, however, are the most spoken languages by far, making Canada an officially bilingual country.
English is spoken by 58.1% of Canada’s total population, which translates to over 20 million native speakers. However, 86.2% of Canadians are able to conduct a conversation in English and 74.5% of them speak English at home. This makes English the overwhelming majority language by far, apart from Quebec – Which is predominantly French – and Nunavut, where Inuit is the native language of 83% of the population.
French is the second most widely spoken language in Canada. In 2016, the percentage of Canadians who could speak both English and French was at 17.9, its highest ever. However, in recent years there has been a slight decline in the prevalence of French as both a mother tongue and a language spoken at home, which is true even for the francocentric region of Quebec.
The next most spoken language in Canada is Chinese. Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese speakers make up for about 3.5% of Canada’s total population, or a little over 1.2 million native speakers. The influence of Chinese in Canada is increasing, with the number of people who spoke Chinese at home increased for nearly 17% between 2011 and 2016. The influence of Chinese in Canada is mainly a result of Chinese immigrants, whose first arrival happened prior to 1867, and again as recently as the 1990s.
Apart from English and French, there are 209 other languages spoken in Canada. Accounting for about 18.8% of Canada’s total population are other immigrant languages which can also be heard within Canada, such as: Punjabi, Tagalog, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, German, Urdu, Catalan, Fijian, Belarusan, Bilen, Kashmiri, Yiddish, Filipino and Korean. Punjabi is the fifth most common language in Canada after English, French, Mandarin and Cantonese, most commonly spoken by immigrants in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary.
There is a total of 67 Aboriginal tongues spoken inside Canada, accounting for about 0.6% of the total population, or 213,230 native speakers, with Cree being the most widely spoken Aboriginal language. Other Aboriginal languages include Inuktitut, Ojibway, Oji-Cree, Dene and Montagnais (Innu) which are spoken by more than 10,000 people, as well as those spoken by fewer than 100 people, such as Sarsi, Oneida, Comox, Southern Tutchone, Squamish, Cayuga, Southern East Cree, Siouan, Algonquian, Athabaskan, Wakashan and Iroquoian.
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