Estonians among EU nations most fluent in foreign languages

Estonia is one of the European Union member states having the largest percentage of residents speaking at least two foreign languages, it appears from a report by the EU statistical office Eurostat.

Of Estonian residents of ages 25-64, 55.9% said they spoke two or more foreign languages. By this criterion Estonia ranks fifth among EU nations.
One foreign language is spoken by 30.4% of residents in Estonia while 13.6% speak no second language, shows the study published on the occasion of the European Day of Languages celebrated on 26 September.

The table of self-perceived language knowledge of adults was topped by Slovenia, where 71.8% of residents said they spoke at least two foreign languages, followed by Slovakia with 68%, Finland with 67.9% and Lithuania with 66.1%. Latvia was in sixth place after Estonia with 54.9%.

According to the survey, English is the most commonly spoken foreign language in two-thirds of EU member states. Russian is the most widespread foreign language in the three Baltic countries, Poland and Bulgaria. Of these countries, Lithuania has the highest ratio of speakers of Russian as foreign language.

In the UK the most commonly spoken second language is French, and in Slovakia, the Czech language.

The poorest command of foreign languages was reported in Hungary – three in four Hungarians said they spoke no foreign language at all. The percentage of such people was 51 in Portugal, 47 in Spain, 44 in Bulgaria and 43 in Greece. The survey was based on data for 2007

Comments

[BillChapman]

I wonder whether we will ever see "Saluton, Estonio" at the top of this blog?

Esperanto is a very useful language which is rather undervalued.

Take a look at http://www.lernu.net
Esperanto works! I’ve used it in speech and writing - and sung in it - in about fifteen countries over recent years.

Are there any Esperanto-speakers in Estonia?