Languages of the United Kingdom

Languages of the United Kingdom
Multilingual sign in London
Main	English (98%;[1] national and de facto official)[a][2][3][4]
Minority	Scots (2.5%),[5] Welsh (1.3%),[6] Cornish  (<0.01% L2),[7][8][9] Scottish Gaelic, Irish,[a] Ulster Scots (0.05%),[10] Angloromani, Beurla Reagaird, Shelta
Immigrant	Polish, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Arabic, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil[11]
Signed	British Sign Language, (0.002%)[c][12] Irish Sign Language, Signed English, Northern Ireland Sign Language
Keyboard layout	British QWERTY
a.^ Statistics indicate respondents who can speak at least "well". b.^ Statistics indicate respondents with at least basic ability. c.^ Statistics undertaken with assumptions and large disparities between home countries.

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English, in various dialects, is the most widely spoken language of the United Kingdom,^[13] but a number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken. Regional indigenous languages are Scots and Ulster Scots and the Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and, as a revived language with few speakers, Cornish. British Sign Language is also used. There are also many languages spoken by immigrants who arrived recently to the United Kingdom, mainly within inner city areas; these languages are mainly from continental Europe and South Asia.^[14]

The de facto official language of the United Kingdom is English.^{[15][failed verification]} Additionally, Welsh is an official language, under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, in Wales.^[16][17] Welsh is spoken by 538,300 people in Wales according to the 2021 census.^[18] Approximately 124,000 people speak Irish in Northern Ireland, which is an official language in Northern Ireland alongside English.^[19]