Census data from a 2011 survey of 56.1 million residents of England and Wales show that 546,000 speak Polish, making it now the second main language in England. There are still slightly more Welsh speakers in Wales at 562,000, reports The Guardian.
The next biggest main languages are the south Asian languages of Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati, followed by Arabic, French, Chinese and Portuguese. More than 100 different languages were recorded.
All but three of the London boroughs, excluding the City, Richmond and Havering, have residents speaking more than 100 main languages. Hillingdon is the most linguistically diverse, with 107 languages listed, followed by Newham, with 103.
Ealing is the nation’s hotspot for Polish speaking, Slough for Punjabi/Urdu, Leicester for Gujarati, Kensington for French and Manchester for Cantonese and Mandarin and one million households have no residents with English as a main language.
The census also covered languages only spoken by a tiny minority, for example Caribbean creole was only spoken by one person in Barnet and one in Bexley.
