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Northern Ireland Office

Answer

Mr. McNamara: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what his estimate is of the number of speakers of (a) each European lesser-used language and (b) other languages used in Northern Ireland. [149227] Angela Smith: The following table provides details of speakers of lesser-used languages recognised under the Council of Europe's Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Language Speakers Source and comments Irish 106,844 Persons aged three and over (NI census, 2001). In total 167,490 persons have `some knowledge' of Irish Ulster-Scots 35,000 Approximate, based on 2 per cent. of population. (NI Life and Times Survey, 1999) _________________________________________________________________________________________________. We have no information on the number of users of other European lesser-used languages. I estimate their numbers to be minimal. The approximate numbers of speakers of other languages used in Northern Ireland are as follows: _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Language Speakers Source and comment English 1,700,000+ All Irish and Ulster-Scots speakers are bilingual. See "In other words", Daniel Holder (2003) for information on knowledge of English among speakers of other languages Chinese 4,200 Various dialects are spoken. NI census (2001) recorded 4,200 people of Chinese ethnic origin. Holder (2003) estimates 8,000 British Sign Language 3,000 British Deaf Association Irish Sign Language 1,500 British Deaf Association Cant/Shelta/Gammon 1,700 Oral languages of the Irish Traveller Community Holder (2003), Kirk and O Baoill (2002) Arabic 1,000-1,500 Holder (2003), Modern Standard Arabic, also including speakers of Western and Eastern Arabic Portuguese 1,000+ Holder (2003) Tagalog 600 Holder (2003) (National Language of the Philippines) Bengali 450-500 Holder (2003) Hindi or Punjabi 1,700 Holder (2003) Southern Indian Languages 500 Holder (2003) includes Tamil, Kannada, Kanta, Malay ala, Marati, Oriya and Telugu Farsi 350 Holder (2003) _________________________________________________________________________________________________. There are also smaller numbers of other language speakers such as Albanian; Turkish; African Languages such as Swahili; Afghani; Russian; Japanese; Hebrew; Korean; Vietnamese; Mallayo; Thai and speakers of other European Languages such as French and Spanish (both from those countries and from other countries where those languages are spoken). In total there are over 70 minority ethnic languages spoken in Northern Ireland (Holder, 2003).

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

416 c1156-7W; 149227

Session

2003-04

Subjects

Languages Northern Ireland Minority groups

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk