A glance at the table chart with the figures provided reveals the proportion of the popularity of the nine languages learnt by English-speaking people at the UK Centre for Foreign Language Learning in 2020.
Overall, it is clear that this information is divided into two genders, including women and men. We can witness that while most women took part in Mandarin classes, men decided to enhance their speaking skills with Arabic classes. Besides, both genders show interest in learning Spanish as an additional language.
Concerning the women’s column, Mandarin dominated the ranking for favoured languages, with 27% of learners choosing it. Spanish was the second most popular language, accounting for 19%, while Polish ranked third at 11%. Additionally, other languages, including Japanese, German, French, and Arabic, had participation rates lower than Spanish by about a factor of two. Furthermore, the percentage of learners learning French and Arabic recorded a similarity, with 10%. In contrast, Italian and Welsh were the least spoken languages, accounting for 3% and 4%, respectively.
In the case of the men’s column, it was observed that 22% of male native English speakers opted for Arabic to learn, which was higher than the figure for Spanish by a narrow margin of 3%. Languages such as Mandarin, German, and Japanese also attracted more male learners, with rates ranging between 10% and 14%. Conversely, the scale of students choosing French, Italian, Polish, and Welsh had a noticeably lower percentage, with figures below 10%.