I know many European countries have multiple official languages or teach several in school. But from your experience, how common is it for the average person to be fluently conversational in three or more languages?
Is it mostly younger, educated people in cities, or is it a widespread skill across different ages and regions? What are the most common language combinations?
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Pretty much everyone who grew up here will be conversational in Swedish and English.
The people who are conversational in another language are usually:
* Those who speak a third language at home.
* Those who took language studies in school a bit more seriously – opted in for more study time, maybe took part in an exchange trip, maybe lived abroad for a while.
It’s a fair amount of people, though those who speak two languages are far more common.
Pretty common for young people in regions with regional languages
Catalan+Spanish+English is probably the most frequent trilingual combination in Spain
In Luxembourg it is a requirement to get through your school career. German from year 1, French from year 3, English from year 7, at least when I went to school. Subjects like History, Geography or Maths start off in German and then switch to French at some point, depending on your secondary school type. So everyone finishing school should be conversational in at least 3 foreign languages, plus their native language assuming it is not one of the above.
In Finland its quite common to be able to speak Finnish, Swedish and English at some level, since they are all taught at elementary school level
Not as common as it used to be. Just Dutch and English for most people. German proficiency is higher in border regions. But good luck finding anyone who can hold a conversation in French.
Pretty damn rare, we basically all study English, Irish and a European language (usually French or Spanish) in school but actual fluency in Irish or the European language is pretty uncommon. There are Irish language schools that definitely do better in terms of actually teach students the language but they’re not the majority.
According to the census I think 40% of people claim to be able to speak Irish but I think that’s likely over inflated.
I can string together a few sentences in Irish and French and I can usually get the meaning of written sentences in them but that’s about it.
3 or more in PL? Not common at all, I’d say the majority struggle with simply English on top of their native Polish. And people in cites are better at languages, but not the younger 20yo people, but the middle aged ones around 40yo.
It’s not the norm, but fairly common.
The most typical case is Finnish + fairly high-level (possibly fully fluent) English + some rusty skills in 1-2 other languages studied at school, but neglected since.
But then we have people whose native language is not Finnish, but are either Swedish-speaking Finns or members of smaller language minorities, and here high-level trilingualism becomes common.
I know quite a lot of people who are at full-native level in both Finnish and one of the minority languages — usually due to either a fully bilingual home, or going through Finnish-language schooling while speaking another language at home. And then there’s highly fluent English as a third language.
Depending on their life history (e.g. working or studying abroad) and interests, there could also good skills in 4th/5th languages.
I live in a monolingual Finnish speaking area of Finland, and just like everybody else studying the other official language was mandatory for me in school. I studied Swedish for six year. Despite this my Swedish is sub par, I wouldn’t say I speak it.
I think this is a pretty common thing in my region, people aren’t super motivated to learn Swedish and don’t speak it so well. So speaking three or more languages isn’t that common. If I had to guess, maybe like one in five speak Finnish, English and Swedish on a somewhat proficient level in my region. Complete guess though, just how it feels to me.
The situation is probably very different in other regions that are more bilingual. For example my father lives in a city that’s about 60/40 Finnish/Swedish speakers, and it feels like pretty much everybody speaks three languages there. They probably don’t, but that’s how it feels like.
Then there probably are a lot of recent immigrants and children of immigrants who speak English, Finnish and their native or their parents’ native language.
Very common.
In Iceland basically everyone speaks Icelandic and English (except maybe recent immigrants).
We also have to learn a Scandinavian language in school, usually Danish, and many people spend time in Scandinavia for school or work and are therefore pretty good at the language.
A third language is also required in upper secondary school, usually German, French or Spanish, but most people aren’t that good after 2-3 years of school.
I’d say it’s very common, in addition to Icelandic, to speak pretty good English, and understand Danish and a third language pretty well, even if people aren’t always conversational in those.
Depends on the person’s background (being an immigrant or upper class can make a big difference) or the region itself. It also depends on how fluent are we talking about, though I assume you mean fluent enough that the person doesn’t need to use a translator in the vast majority of situations, or at all.
For Spain, I’d say it’s not that common overall if your family is an average low to middle class exclusively Spanish-speaking family, but it’s becoming more common with newer waves of emigration and more people getting access to higher education. For obvious reasons, being fluent in a third language is far more common in bilingual regions (think Galicia, Basque Country, Navarre, Catalonia, Valencia, Balearic Islands). Rich parents like to enroll their kids in foreign language courses and what not, but I’d say that’s a international thing.
Now, if you’re an immigrant (or from an immigrant family) and grow up in one of those bilingual regions, you’re gonna have the three from the start. Which is my case, as English is my fourth language and I would say I’m decently fluent in it.
Portugal is heavily monolingual outside of some social circles (Mirandés does exist, but it’s unfortunately consistently ignored by the central government and society at large), but with the difference that most people have very close family living abroad or have lived abroad themselves (more often so than in Spain) and the average Portuguese generally has an easier time learning foreign languages when compared to the average Spaniard. That said, most Portuguese people I know (and live in Portugal) are fluent, at most, in two languages (usually Portuguese and English). Three languages is not as usual but increasingly common, but I’d reckon a lot of people can be somewhat conversational in a third language, but definitely not fluent (I see this a lot with Spanish or French). Obviously, just like with Spain, immigrants easily know 2/3 languages from the get-go.
Uncommon.
Rural Wales: Welsh & English
Rest: English
I think the formula in Europe is “Local language + Official Language + Cool or useful foreign language”.
In Bulgaria, some combination of Bulgarian + Turkish + German + English + Russian + Romani is pretty common. Depending on the background and education you will have 2 or 3 of those.
In Turkey, Turkish + Kurdish + Arabic + English + Other minority are common and depending on the education and background you will have Turkish + (Kurdish/Arabic/Other minority) + English.
Latvia. Over generations the language skills change but most people do speak several. My late grandmother, born in 1904, knew Latvian, German, after WW2 had to learn Russian just like everybody else. Not mentioning the Greek and Latin because those were from classical specialised school. My parents know Latvian, Russian, English. Dad fluent, mom speaks somewhat slower. Sometimes posters on internet say that older generation doesn’t speak English. They are in their 80ies. How much older does one get. My generation normally also speaks Latvian, Russian, English or German (depending on which was available in their school and the level could be lower). It’s the younger generation that doesn’t have Russian at school anymore so the knowledge is from living in the city interacting with the neighbours. Or not. My kids know Latvian, English. They had a choice of yet another foreign language at school ( German or Russian) but the quality was low, neither can speak their third language. Later in life they learned more languages but that’s not really typical.
Pretty common.. Additionally to our native language (Slovenian), the older folk (50+) will still be able to speak Serbo-Croat (no offence to our Serbian and Croatian friends, we know they are two languages, but that’s what we were taught), most will also speak either English or German or both. On the coast, many speak Italian and on the east, we have a Hungarian minority. Tourist workers usually speak most of those languages apart from Hungarian…
3 languages should be normal for someone both educated and belonging to an ethnic minority. For example, speaking Tatar, Russian, English.
Not common. People in Czech sometimes don’t even know english despite it being required subject in schools.
Edit: to add to this people who speak 3+ languages are usally foreigners in origin usally people from Ukraine.
A better question would be how common is it to genuinely speak two or more languages.
The majority of the UK can only really speak one – English.
About 18% of the country were born abroad, so I imagine they can speak their native language. Some might be from English speaking countries, but then some will have British born children who speak their language, so I’d imagine that’s around 20%.
Then you have some people who grew up in parts of Wales who speak Welsh and English. I think about 1% of the UK (800,000) speak fluent Welsh. You also have a handful in Scotland who speak Gaelic, but that’s much rarer (approx. 60,000). You also have the debate around whether Scots counts as a language or if it’s a dialect of English, and in which case were do you draw the line on the spectrum. But again, we’re not talking large numbers.
People learn Welsh or Gaelic at school in parts pd Scotland and Wales. There are also a handful of Irish speakers in Northern Ireland.
Then French, German, and Spanish are commonly learnt at school, but not to a level of fluency. A handful of people do take it futher though (I’m happily conversational in German, but wouldn’t call myself fluent – but that’s more from living in Germany than from my 4 years of German lessons at school).
Most estimates put the number of bilingual people in the UK at between 15-30%, depending on how you define fluency.
Being trilingual, however, is pretty rare. You’d have to be really into languages (e.g. study both French and German at university) or have parents from two different countries to really get to that level.
Just two is rare enough.
Rare, unless born in Sønderjylland/North Slesvig. But in mentioned area, they do usually speak German, Danish and English.
In Slovenia people older than 50 will likely speak at least conversational Serbo-Croatian and with younger generations it’s not ubiquitus, but not uncommon. In the north and north east German is fairly common especially among millenials and older, since people work in Austria, generations born before 2000s grew up with German programming and may have had German as a first foreign language in school instead of English. South west will likely speak at least some Italian due to dependance on Italy, especially those living in officially bilingual regions. Far north east is officially bilingual with Hungarian, so you might have Hungarian speakers (though they’re uncommon) and their dialect might as well be a separate language (it even has its own grammar). Add in relatively high level of English proficiency among the population and being conversational in at least 3 languages becomes pretty damn common.
Dutch, French and English as a minimum is normal. Some others include Italian, Spanish or German as well
Extremely rare. I’m not even sure about the numbers on English fluency but it’s pretty low and most people speak rather choppy English with terrible grammar and worse pronunciation. To speak another language on top of English is very rare. I speak French but I would not call myself fluent in it despite having worked with French partners and customers and colleagues in the past 8 years. I understand virtually everything I hear or read but I struggle with a fluent answer, especially verbally. My wife however speaks fluent Englih, French and her Italian is better than my French. We also started learning German but had to drop it due to time constraints but after 6 months I was faring OK. I wish I could find a teacher like that but for French.
Italy. I’d say not common at all
In the Faroe Islands everyone speaks at least three languages.
We have Faroese as our Native language, Danish as a secondary official language and then everyone speaks English fluently as well.
Add on top of that that practically everyone over 40 also had compulsory German in school plus most speak/understand Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic with a modicum of effort. Norwegian is practically a Faroese Dialect of Danish in our ears (Gøtudanskt).
From the 8th year of school onwards it is common for pupils to choose other foreign languages, with the most common being Spanish and French. Some choose Russian and Chinese.
So I would say that the majority of Faroese speak at least 5 languages and understand maybe 6-7. Personally I speak Faroese, Danish, Norwegian and English on a Native level, with Swedish, German, Spanish and Icelandic at a medium level.