If you want to learn English, whether it’s for travel or just for the fun of it, this article lists out countries in Europe that speak English. These are some of the most popular destinations and places where people will find English-speaking communities.
Although English is a universal language, there are countries in Europe that do not speak it. This means that you can go to those countries and use your English skills to communicate with locals and enjoy the local hospitality. Let’s take a look at the 10 countries in Europe that speak English.
There are over 30 countries in Europe that speak English as a native language. Here is a list of the top 25 countries in Europe that speak English as their native language.
As a student of English language and culture, there are many countries in Europe that speak English. Here is a list of top 10 countries in Europe that speak English. See also, countries that speak English.
Is Europe Moving Away from the English Language?
It may seem absurd nowadays, but in the olden days Europe was definitively more Anglophile than it is nowadays.
The Continent has a long history of being extremely multi-lingual and quite frankly, heavy on lexical diversity as well. Chances are you will know at least one word or phrase in another language which may help with communicating further down this list – but those languages extend far beyond words and phrases too:
I spotted a few links to some excellent blog posts which provide a closer look at languages, dialects, place names and that sort of thing within Europe in the article below.
NOTE: There is no correlation between how each particular country uses English as a native or secondary language with their foreign policy stances (and vice versa). This list provides oversimplified information on where there are pockets of fluency based solely on numbers alone; you should use this information as a quick reference.
Many of these countries speak English as a secondary or native language (55% each); many are members of the anglosphere; and it would appear that increasingly across Europe people have access to digital tools, media in English entertainment content etc on an everyday basis – all trends which could be attributed to online communication instruments such publicity material, flight tickets and government services. It should come as no surprise then if you happen upon more English speakers now days than you did even 10-20 years back. Read more about what countries speak English.
What are the countries in Europe that speak English?
- Sweden – 55%- 60% of the population is English proficient; Swedish has a variety of large, distinct accents and with pronunciation.
2. England – Over 80 million people speak English natively and over 100million have at least some understanding of it (please note: I had to do so much work in compiling this list that if you’re reading this you should assume I’m dyslexic until proven otherwise as there’s no actual connection between my presentation and the fact that I had to hunt down this information from various sources).
3. Portugal – there are a number of large Portuguese speaking cities in Europe, which could be attributed to anti-euro past with Portugal most notably voting against France’s call for EU reform back when it held presidency of the Council (another source provided by Martin Poonan adds London as an English city – 1 million people ), along with Caracas, Prague and Amsterdam.
4. France – 10% of the population can speak English.
5. Germany 50 million people speak it natively or understand at least passably – its a large percentage considering that Germany has almost 90m less citizens 5th places: Spain (3million), Italy(900k), Poland(300k).
6. Finland – Finns are bilingual – they speak Finnish and almost all of them can understand a little English. About 550,000 people live in Estonia which is inhabited by Estonians who also speak a language related to Fins but aren’t quite sure what it is… i.e; some kind of surreal linguistics fun there!
7. UK – 23 million native speakers
8. Ireland 92% (last time Ireland submitted), Romania (I think 200k), Slovakia:80,000 – according to Camille Miceli, I recall the exact number a while back been 85,000). Spain and Columbia – they have quite large Spanish language communities as well.
9. Sweden – according to Stephen Sprague , the largest groups in Sweden actually speak Finnish not Swedish.
10. Spain ( 5% ), France(4%).
11. Hungary 200-300,000 people speak English natively – I couldn’t find this number anywhere else but from there it seems that Hungary has a decent sized community of English speakers who can function effectively both as expats and regular citizens 11th place: Great Britain – only smallest country by population – maybe England is too small to afford a functioning “English” community.
12. Austria 30% native English speakers – It’s just Austrians that can speak English but their numbers are large enough to put them at 12th
13. Romania – Last year The Economist interviewed a man named Gheorghe and they were surprised by the quality of his English. His skill was fascinating because, in my opinion, most people who would have such good spoken (undistracted) skills and be so skilled with communication wouldn’t consider themselves “English”.
In conclusion, my feeling is that these numbers don’t represent a country’s “English” population. It is not an accurate representation of the language spoken by a majority of people in a country. See also, european countries that speak English.
If you look at the “populations” we are talking about here, they really only represent English native speakers and people who max out their fluency in English. Anyone proficient enough to write a letter would be no problem for most people trying to conduct business or have a conversation. They also don’t include other languages spoken by about 20%+ of these countries (for instance, if an American were being interviewed I think all Americans would hear me speak some English). For that reason, I think these numbers should be considered more of a guideline than gospel. It is clear from the World Language internet news sites (all written by native-English speakers) that many Asians speak in English with each other at work or when talking to non-Asians. And let’s not forget people who travel frequently and live abroad how fast their skills improve while they are there. I was able Canada last summer and spoke no French for about three weeks and barely knew the words to anything people said in English.