London languages
Main languages spoken by London’s workers
Nomis – the Office for National Statistics’ labour market statistics service – has classified the workplace population in England and Wales by main language (or at least by what respondents said was their main language).
According to the report, the minor languages spoken by London’s workers include British Sign Language (952 speakers), Welsh (934), Yiddish (522), Caribbean Creole (86), Cornish (15, allegedly) and Manx Gaelic (1).
The table below shows the top 20 workplace languages in London:
| Language | Number of speakers |
|---|---|
| English | 3,622,611 |
| Polish | 105,683 |
| French | 50,158 |
| Gujarati | 47,892 |
| Spanish | 44,307 |
| Portuguese | 41,689 |
| Bengali (with Sylheti and Chatgaya) | 35,678 |
| Tamil | 33,135 |
| Italian | 32,420 |
| Urdu | 29,652 |
| Panjabi | 29,272 |
| Romanian | 26,658 |
| Turkish | 24,569 |
| Lithuanian | 24,223 |
| Arabic | 24,138 |
| Chinese (all dialects) | 23,989 |
| German | 20,980 |
| Tagalog/Filipino | 18,329 |
| Bulgarian | 16,862 |
| Russian | 16,190 |
The estimates above are as at census day, 27 March 2011, and include all usual residents aged 16 to 74 in employment in London in the week before the census. The dataset was last updated by Nomis on 23 May 2014.
See also Hidden London’s page on London demographics.