Over 250 languages are spoken in London, making the capital the most linguistically diverse city in the world.

In a survey of 850,000 children in London schools the question about first language spoken at home was asked.

The 40 most common languages spoken are

Language Approx total Language Approx total English 608,500 Igbo (Nigeria) 1,900 Bengali & Silheti 40,400 French-based Creoles 1,800 Panjabi 29,800 Tagalog (Filipino 1,600 Gujerati 28,600 Kurdish 1,400 Hindi/Urdu 26,000 Polish 1,500 Turkish 15,600 Swahili 1,000 Arabic 11,000 Lingala (Congo) 1,000 English-based Creoles 10,700 Albanian 900 Yorubu (Nigeria) 10,400 Luganda (Uganda) 800 Somali 8,300 Ga (Ghana) 800 Cantonese 6,900 Tigrinya (Sudan) 800 Greek 6,300 German 800 Akan (Ashanti) 6,000 Japanese 800 Portuguese 6,000 Serbian/Croatian 700 French 5,600 Russian 700 Spanish 5,500 Hebrew 650 Tamil (Sri Lanka) 3,700 Korean 550 Farsi (Persian) 3,300 Pashto (Afghanistan) 450 Italian 2,500 Amharic (Ethiopia) 450 Vietnamese 2,400 Sinhala (Sri Lanka) 450

Numbers have been rounded up or down to the nearest 50

Source website: Baker, P. and Eversley, J. (eds) (2000) Multilingual Capital, London: Battlebridge.

Languages Spoken in Britain