A YouGov survey of six European countries reveals wide gaps in language fluency, motivation to learn, and views on compulsory language education.
Nearly every European agrees that speaking a second language is a valuable skill — but a recent survey suggests far fewer can actually do it, with fluency levels varying widely from one country to the next.
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According to a YouGov survey of adults in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, between 87% and 97% across all six countries say learning another language is useful.
Yet when respondents were asked whether they could actually speak a second language fluently, the numbers told a different story.
Denmark recorded the highest rate, with 74% of Danish adults saying they can speak another language fluently. Germany followed at 54%, Spain at 47%, France at 37%, and Italy at 28%.
Britain recorded the lowest rate of the six countries, with one in five adults — 21% — saying they are fluent in a second language.
The dominance of English as the global language likely plays a role in this. In fact, English is the most common second language spoken among Europeans: between 62% and 93% of those who speak more than one language say they can speak English fluently.
In Britain, a quarter of those who speak another language say they can speak French, followed by Spanish.
Why are some people averse to language learning?
Among those who don't speak a second language, the most common explanation, across most of the countries surveyed, was that they have not felt a need to learn one.
Spain was the exception: there, more than a third of non-speakers cited difficulty as the main reason instead.
More than 70% of non-speakers in every country surveyed said they would like to learn a new language, with travel cited as the leading motivation.
English was the language most respondents said they wanted to learn, chosen by as many as 83% across the continent — the exception, of course, being Britain, where Spanish and French were the most popular choices.
Should language learning be compulsory?
The survey also asked whether respondents believed visitors to their country should speak the local language.
In Italy, Spain and France, between 56% and 72% of respondents said tourists should be expected to do so. In Britain, Germany and Denmark, that figure was between 22% and 39%.
On education, in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, between 82% and 90% of respondents said foreign languages should be compulsory in schools up to the age of 16.
In Britain, 66% said the same. Britons were also the least likely of the six nationalities to describe speaking another language as "very useful," at 46%, compared with between 57% and 70% in the other five countries.