Question for Brits

In England or the UK in general, what’s the most common language you’ll hear spoken other than english?

Obviously here in the US it’s Spanish, you hear Spanish spoken pretty much everywhere you go. Walking down the street in say, London, what non-english language are you most likely to hear in passing?

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

We don't often hear other languages much and there isn't one in particular.

If you know Muslims, then you will hear Urdu or Arabic. If you live in London, then you will hear a whole range of languages.

At school, French and German are probably the most common 'second languages; taught, followed by Spanish or Italian. Honestly, we are pretty bad at languages because we are an island and because everyone else speaks English.

Years ago, I worked for a holiday company and we sometimes got complaints from our customers visiting the south of France because the locals could not speak English. In most European holiday resorts, they hire people who speak English to help the Brits and our customers were pissed off that we didn't (because we couldn't).

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@supersnipe Strange that because high school students in Norway generally speak English quite well enough to hold down a job. Unfortunately it's not because Norwegian schools are better at teaching languages, it's simply because the students find it useful.

In my opinion schools should stop teaching languages and instead just send the students for a year to ordinary schools in a country that speaks the desired language. Immersion is much faster and considerably less painful than formal class room tuition.

Or even better, as soon as the children are fluent in their mother tongue send them to a kindergarten that only speaks the target language. My children went to Norwegian kindergarten half time from the age of three and a half. Well within a year they were indistinguishable from the natives and they had no instruction at all.

supersnipe · 61-69, M

@ninalanyon One of my sisters hosted some Ukrainian refugees and the children went to the school down the road. They learnt English pretty fast. Their mother was a determined lady who 'saw the point' and picked it up quite quickly too.

My comments about foreign languages here are based on my own experience. On leaving school, though I was one of the best performers in my class in French, I was nowhere near fluent at GCE 'O'-level (now GCSE and taken at 16).[i] That [/i]took a few more years, and I only really got confident after a couple of terms of university.