Half of Bulgaria’s working-age population knows a foreign language – Eurostat
About 50 per cent of Bulgarians of working age know a foreign language, the fourth-lowest percentage in the European Union, statistics agency Eurostat said.
Eurostat said that among Bulgarians of working age, 32.5 per cent knew one foreign language, 13.7 per cent knew two and 3.3 per cent knew three or more.
The EU country with the lowest percentage of working-age people who know a foreign language was the UK, at 35 per cent, Eurostat said, quoting figures for 2016.
Second-lowest was Romania, 36 per cent, and third-lowest Hungary, at 42 per cent.
High levels of multilingualism were present in Luxembourg, where more than half of the working-age adults reported speaking at least three foreign languages. Knowledge of at least three foreign languages was also high in Finland (45 per cent) and Slovenia (38 per cent).
In 2016, 65 per cent of working-age adults in the EU knew at least one foreign language.
In some EU countries, knowledge of foreign languages was particularly high.
More than 90 per cent of respondents knew at least one foreign language in these countries: Sweden (97 per cent), Latvia, Denmark and Lithuania (all 96 per cent), Luxembourg (95 per cent), Finland and Malta (both 92 per cent) and Estonia (91 per cent).
(Photo: Simon Cataudo/sxc.hu)
