Danes among the best in the EU for fluency in languages

On average, 2.8 languages are spoken proficiently by every person

When it comes to the average number of languages spoken per country in Europe, Denmark is fourth, according to the Czech linguist Jakub Marian.

On average, the Danes speak 2.8 languages – the best in the Nordic region and behind just Luxembourg (3.6), the Netherlands (3.2) and Slovenia (3.0).

Marian's research is based on the European Commission's 2012 Eurobarometer 386 survey, which he used to combine the percentages of bilingual people to calculate the average number of languages spoken per nation.

READ MORE: English word is Danish word of the year

Hungary bottom
Norway is not on Marian's list because it's not in the EU, but Sweden is and scored 2.5, just behind Finland, which scored 2.6.

The four least bilingual nations in the EU were Hungary (1.5), Britain (1.6), Ireland (1.6) and Portugal (1.6).





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