Why is English not the official language of England?

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58 countries have English as an official language -  but not the USA or the UK.

Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

  • The world's lingua franca or second language is not the 'official' language of its birthplace. 
  • According to the 2021 Census, approximately 91.1% (52.6 million) speak English (or Welsh in Wales) as a native language. 
  • This figure indicates a slight decrease from 92.3% in 2011 and includes an estimated 700,000 native Welsh speakers.
  •  Immigration patterns in the 2020s suggest that the proportion of native English speakers has fallen significantly. 
  • English is spoken as a first or second language by approximately 59.8 million residents, or 98% of the population.
  • Of those who did not speak English as their main language, a large majority (7.1% of the total population) spoke it "well" or "very well
  • 1.8% of the population could not speak English well or at all.

Other languages  

    According to the 2021 Census, those not born in the UK spoke a large number of different languages. These included Polish (1.1%), Romanian (0.8%), Punjabi (0.5%), and Urdu (0.5%). 
    • Welsh is an official language in Wales, and the only legally recognised official language in any part of the UK.
    • Approximately 1.5 million people in the UK speak Scots — although there is debate as to whether Scots is a distinct language, or a variety of English.
    • The official status of Irish (Gaelic) is a major source of political dispute in Northern Ireland.
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