English is the most widely spoken and de facto official language of the United Kingdom. A number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken. Indigenous Indo-European regional languages include both Celtic languages and Germanic languages. The main Celtic languages are grouped into Goidelic, which includes Irish and Scottish Gaelic; and the surviving Western Brittonic language, Welsh.
Close relatives of English in the West Germanic language group include Scots and Ulster Scots. There are many non-native languages spoken by immigrants and their descendents, including Polish, Hindi, and Urdu. British Sign Language is sometimes used as well as liturgical and hobby languages such as Latin and a Celtic revived form of Southwestern Brittonic, Cornish.
Welsh is spoken by 538,300 people in Wales according to the 2021 census. Data from the Annual Population Survey shows that 28%, or roughly 862,700 people, of Wales' population aged three and over were able to speak the language in March 2024. Welsh is a de jure official language under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 in Wales.
Irish is spoken by about 124,000 people in Northern Ireland, and is now a de jure official language there since 2022.
List of languages and dialects
Living The table below outlines living indigenous languages of the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The languages of the Crown Dependencies, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, are not included here.
LanguageTypeSpoken inNumbers of speakers in the UK English West Germanic Throughout the United Kingdom UK (2021 data): 91.1% (52.6 million) of usual residents, aged three years and over, had English (English or Welsh in Wales) as a main language, down from 92.3%, or 49.8 million, in 2011 Scots (Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland) West Germanic Scotland (Scottish Lowlands, Caithness, Northern Isles) and Berwick-upon-TweedNorthern Ireland (Counties Down, Antrim, Londonderry) UK (2022 data): 2.23% Scotland: 27.74%, or 1,508,540 Scots speakers (Scottish Census Data 2022) Welsh Celtic(Brythonic) Wales (especially west and north) and parts of England near the Welsh–English borderWelsh communities in major English cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.UK (2021 data): 0.90% Wales (2021 data): 17.8%; 538,300 people in the 2021 census. An estimation of 862,700 people, or 28%, of Wales' population aged three and over were able to speak the language in March 2024. British Sign Language BANZSL Throughout the United Kingdom 151,056, of whom 86,700 are deaf England: 127,000 (of whom 73,000 are deaf) Scotland: 12,556 (7,200) Wales: 7,200 (4,000) Northern Ireland 4,300 (2,500), 2011 Census data. Irish Celtic(Goidelic) Northern Ireland, with communities in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London etc. Northern Ireland: 71,872 (2021 census data) Angloromani Mixed Spoken by English Romanichal Traveller communities in England, Scotland and Wales 90,000 (1990 data) Scottish Gaelic Celtic(Goidelic) Scotland (Scottish Highlands and Hebrides with substantial minorities in various Scottish cities)A small community in London UK (2022 data): 0.20% Scotland (2022 data): 135,915, or 2.5%, of the Scottish population at the time of Scotland's 2022 census Shelta Mixed Spoken by Irish Traveller communities throughout the United KingdomEst. 30,000. Cornish Celtic(Brythonic) Cornwall (even smaller minorities of speakers in Plymouth, London, and South Wales)In the 2021 UK Census, 567 people noted that they could speak Cornish.This was 0.00083% of the UK or 0.099% of the Cornish population of 570,300. Irish Sign Language Francosign Northern Ireland Unknown Northern Ireland Sign Language BANZSL Northern Ireland Unknown
Anglic
British English English English (as spoken in England) Northern English Cheshire dialect Cumbrian Northumbrian Geordie (of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and surrounding area) Lancastrian (Lancashire, northern parts of Greater Manchester, eastern parts of Merseyside and surrounding area) Mackem (of Sunderland and surrounding area) Mancunian (Greater Manchester, Cheshire East and surrounding area) Yorkshire/Tyke Scouse (Liverpool and other parts of Merseyside, Cheshire West, parts of North Wales and surrounding area) East Midlands English West Midlands English Black Country (of Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Sandwell) Brummie (spoken in Birmingham) Potteries (North Staffordshire, centred on Stoke on Trent) Southern England English East Anglian Estuary English London Cockney Multicultural London English West Country dialects (Bristol, Devon, Dorset, Somerset; also parts of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Herefordshire) Cornish English Scottish English Highland English Welsh English Cardiff dialect (additional varieties of which spoken throughout South Wales) Hiberno English Ulster English Sign Supported English (a sign language based on English, not BSL) Scots Insular Scots Shetland dialect Orcadian Northern Scots Doric Central Scots Glaswegian Southern Scots Ulster Scots
Insular Celtic
Brythonic languages Western Brittonic languages Welsh Southwestern Brittonic languages Cornish Goidelic languages Irish Ulster Irish Scottish Gaelic Beurla Reagaird Manx
Mixed Angloromani Scottish CantScottish Cant at Ethnologue (12th ed., 1992). Shelta
Sign languages BANZSL British Sign Language Northern Ireland Sign Language Francosign Irish Sign Language
Extinct Insular Celtic Brythonic Cumbric Pictish Goidelic Galwegian Gaelic Anglic Old English Middle English Yola Fingalian Early Scots Middle Scots Nordic Old Norse Norn Indic Romani Welsh Romani Romance Anglo-Norman Kentish Sign Old Kentish Sign
Regional languages and statistics
England
English
In the 2011 UK census, 98% of people over the age of three were reported as speaking English.
English is a West Germanic language brought around the 5th century CE to the east coast of what is now England by Germanic-speaking immigrants from around present-day northern Germany, who came to be known as the Anglo-Saxons. The fusion of these settlers' dialects became what is now termed Old English: the word English is derived from the name of the Angles. English soon displaced the previously predominant Common Brittonic and British Latin throughout most of England.
The English language spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, via the British Empire, and of the United States since the mid-20th century, it has been widely dispersed around the world, and become the leading language of international discourse.
Many English words are based on roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life. The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language, with Viking invasions and settlements in England from the 8th to the 11th centuries.
The Norman conquest of England in 1066 gave rise to heavy borrowings from Old French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give what had now become Middle English the superficial appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.
Cornish
Cornish, a Brythonic Celtic language related to Welsh, was spoken in Cornwall throughout the Middle Ages. Its use began to decline from the 14th century, especially after the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549. The language continued to function as a first language in Penwith in the far west of Cornwall until the late 18th century, with the last native speaker thought to have died in 1777.
A revival initiated by Henry Jenner began in 1903. In 2002, the Cornish language was named as a historical regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The UN classes it as a critically endangered language.
Wales
Welsh () emerged in the 6th century from Brittonic, the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and the extinct language known as Cumbric. Welsh is thus a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, and is spoken natively in Wales. There are also Welsh speakers in (The Colony),National Library of Wales' bibliography for 'The Welsh settlement in Patagonia' a Welsh settlement in Argentina, which began in 1865 and is situated mainly along the coast of Chubut Province in the south of Patagonia. It is believed that there are as many as 5,000 speakers of Patagonian Welsh.
The Welsh Language Board indicated in 2004 that 553,000 people (19.7% of the population of Wales in households or communal establishments) were able to speak Welsh. Based on an alternative definition, there has been a 0.9 percentage point increase when compared with the 2001 census, and an increase of approximately 35,000 in absolute numbers within Wales. Welsh is therefore a growing language within Wales. Of those 553,000 Welsh speakers, 57% (315,000) were considered by others to be fluent, and 477,000 people consider themselves fluent or "fair" speakers. 62% of speakers (340,000) claimed to speak the language daily, including 88% of fluent speakers.
There is some controversy over the actual number who speak Welsh: some statistics include people who have studied Welsh to GCSE standard, many of whom could not be regarded as fluent speakers of the language. Conversely, some first-language speakers may choose not to report themselves as such. These phenomena, also seen with other minority languages outside the UK, make it harder to establish an accurate and unbiased figure for how many people speak it fluently. Furthermore, no question about Welsh language ability was asked in the 2001 census outside Wales, thereby ignoring a considerable population of Welsh speakers – particularly concentrated in neighbouring English counties and in London and other large cities. It is estimated that 110,000 to 150,000 people in England speak Welsh.Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg, A statistical overview of the Welsh language, by Hywel M Jones, page 115, 13.5.1.6, England. Published February 2012. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
The 2011 census recorded an overall reduction in Welsh speakers, from 582,000 in 2001 to 562,000 in 2011, despite an increase in the size of the population—a 2% drop (from 21% to 19%) in the proportion of Welsh speakers.
The 2021 United Kingdom census indicated that on census day the population of England and Wales was 59.6 million. Of this population, roughly 538,300 people noted that they could speak Welsh, or 0.90% of the population. Within Wales, this percentage grows to 17.8%. Data from the Annual Population Survey shows that 28%, or roughly 862,700 people, of Wales' population aged three and over were able to speak the language in March 2024. 32.5% (1,001,500) reported that they could understand spoken Welsh, 24.7% (759,200) could read and 22.2% (684,500) could write in Welsh.
Both the English and Welsh languages have official, but not always equal, status in Wales. English has de facto official status everywhere, whereas Welsh has limited, but still considerable, official, de jure, status in only the public service, the judiciary, and elsewhere as prescribed in legislation. The Welsh language is protected by the Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998.