Languages
The United Kingdom has no official language. The dominant language, spoken as a first language by 95% of the population, is English. Scots is spoken by around 500,000 people in Scotland and 30,000 in Northern Ireland, where it is called Ulster Scots. Welsh is spoken by around 600,000 people. Scottish Gaelic is spoken by about 60,000 speakers, mostly in Scotland. Cornish is spoken by around 2,500 people. Irish is spoken by about 106,844 speakers in Northern Ireland.
The Polish minority in the United Kingdom estimated over 600,000 people speak mostly Polish at home, Poles are mainly Polish-born immigrants to the UK, although many are those who settled in Britain after the second world war and their descendants. The French language is spoken in the Channel Islands. British Sign Language is also common.
Read more about this topic: Demography Of The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word languages:
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)
“The trouble with foreign languages is, you have to think before your speak.”
—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.