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Happy European Day of Languages!

Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Union) has just published new statistics on language learning at primary level, right in time for the European Day of Languages celebrated on 26 September each year.

The latest stats show that almost 19 million primary school pupils (or 84% of all pupils at this level) in the EU study at least one foreign language, with 83.5% choosing English. French came second with 0.8 million or 4.8%, followed by German (almost 0.7 million or 3.9%), Spanish (0.1 million or 0.6%), Russian (54,000 or 0.3%) and Italian (33,000 or 0.2%).

 

More about the European Day of Languages

The European Day of Languages was first organised in 2001, jointly by the Council of Europe and the European Union, with the aim of both encouraging language learning and preserving the rich cultural heritage of Europe. This year several events are being organised across Europe, including conferences, television and radio programmes, language courses, etc.

 

Photo source: European Commission