Fears of Language Deficits in a Post-Brexit Britain

A declining interest in learning languages is setting Britain back in the international playing field.

As Brexit goes forward and Britain’s economic and political ties to the EU weaken, many of our multi-linguists are leaving the country for the EU₁. Home-grown foreign speakers are dwindling in their numbers as language learning drops in our national list of priorities. Yet now more than ever before we need to focus on sharpening our linguistic abilities if we want to keep up with the rest of the world.

As of this year, 61% of the UK population doesn’t know how to communicate in anything other than English. This percentage will continue to increase despite our best efforts as EU and foreign nationals find themselves having to relocate. In contrast, countries all over the globe make learning English mandatory; of the 1.5 billion speakers, only 375 million are native speakers₂. That’s over a billion foreign people who have the linguistic tools to keep up with a rapidly transforming international environment. Britain’s shortcomings in this area are bound to become clearer as the years pass, and the polyglot population migrates.

So what makes us so certain that English will remain the global language we’ve often taken it for granted to be? Outside of the UK, Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish have overtaken English as the languages with the highest numbers of native speakers₃, shooting them to the forefront of political and economic international discussions.