London's linguistic diversity varies across boroughs.
A study by City Lit, an adult education college and charity, reveals that Bengali is the most commonly spoken foreign language in London. A survey conducted in 2019 indicates that 311,210 London residents mainly speak a foreign language at home. On the contrary, less than one in 10 English-speaking people can speak a second language fluently.
The survey by the City Lit has ranked Bengali, Polish, and Turkish as the top foreign languages spoken in London's diverse linguistic fabric. Interestingly, six of the 10 most spoken languages after English come from outside Europe, being Bengali, Gujarati, Panjabi, Urdu, Arabic, and Tamil. The four European languages in the top 10 are Polish, Turkish, French, and Portuguese.
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This percentage of linguistic diversity varies greatly between certain boroughs. In Barking and Dagenham, Lithuanian occupies the leading position among foreign languages in use, being spoken by about 3% of the population; in Havering, this figure is equal to 0.43%.
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Bengali is twice as common in the next two boroughs, Tower Hamlets and Newham, where it comes in as the second most common language spoken by 18% and 7% of residents, respectively.
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In Redbridge, Urdu is the most commonly spoken foreign language, used by 4% of the population. This City Lit survey, devised as a celebration of London's cultural diversity, provides a snapshot of the capital's multilingualism.