Apparently Sunday is the European Day of Languages, and hence Eurostat released a fascinating (imho, anyway) report with data on, firstly, the percentage of students in all EU countries that study a foreign language in primary and late secondary school respectively, and secondly, the percentage of adults that claims to have a certain level of proficiency in a foreign language. Article below, full statistics to be found at the link. Some of the data are misleading, though; the appalling scores for Britain have a lot to do with the system of the A-levels and the way British students of that age only take very few subjects anymore in which they specialize, while the Irish data fail to include the study of Irish (or English in the Gaeltacht) since they are not "foreign" languages even though they are non-native languages. Not so in Luxembourg, where French and German both are considered "foreign" languages even though they are the predominant languages in Luxembourgian education, culture and the media (as you can tell, the language situation in Luxembourg is somewhat complicated). I would wonder about Belgium except Belgium doesn't have data anyway, so it's a moot point.

And one has to wonder about how comparable the self-reported figures for degrees of proficiency are. Still, they're interesting. The dominance of English is also remarkable.

Might as well add a mini-survey for European members (though Americans and others are welcome to answer as well if they like):

1) Which languages did you learn in school, and for how long?

2) Which languages would you say you speak with some degree of fluency?

3) Do you think languages get too much attention in the school system you went to, too little, or just about enough?

4) What do you think of the remarkable dominance of English that appears in the data?



European Day of Languages


In the EU, nearly 80% of children were studying a foreign language at primary school in 2008.

In the EU in 2008, 79% of pupils at primary level and 83% of those in upper secondary level general programmes were studying a foreign language. At both levels, English was the usual first foreign language. A second foreign language was studied by 10% of pupils at primary level and 39% at upper secondary level, with French and German the most common.

On the occasion of the European Day of Languages, celebrated each year on 26 September, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, publishes data on language learning of school pupils and perceived language skills of adults. The general objectives of this event are to alert the public to the importance of language learning, to promote the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe and to encourage lifelong language learning in and out of school.

Almost all primary pupils study a foreign language in Luxembourg, Sweden, Italy and Spain

The highest shares of pupils in primary education studying a foreign language in 2008 were found in Luxembourg and Sweden (both 100%), Italy (99%) and Spain (98%), and the lowest in Ireland (3%), the Netherlands (32%) and Hungary (33%). The proportion of pupils in primary education studying a second foreign language was highest in Luxembourg ( 83%) and Greece (24%).

Almost all students in upper secondary education general programmes in the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden were studying a foreign language. The lowest shares of students studying a foreign language were found in the United Kingdom (32%) and Ireland (58%). More than 80% of students were studying a second foreign language in Finland (92%), the Netherlands ( 86%) and Romania ( 83%).

30% of adults in the EU declare themselves as being proficient or good in a foreign language

In the EU in 2007, when adults aged 25 to 64 were asked to assess their level of proficiency in their best known foreign language, only 13% declared themselves as being proficient, 16% as being good, 30% as having a fair or basic knowledge and 38% as having no knowledge of a foreign language.

The share considering themselves as being proficient varied significantly between Member States, with the highest shares in Latvia (55%), Slovenia (45%) and Slovakia (44%) and shares of less than 10% in France, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.

The proportion of those declaring themselves as being good was highest in Sweden (40%), Estonia and Slovenia (both 33%), Finland and Cyprus (both 32%). Shares of less than 10% were found in Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.