How many languages do you have to know in order to communicate with the majority of people in each country?

In today's world, the widespread use of English as a global language has facilitated international travel and communication for many. Despite that, however, English fluency levels vary by country with some countries being more proficient in English than others, and with some countries having little to no proficiency in English. In that case, learning the majority spoken language of countries with different languages becomes important to facilitate communication when travelling. In this blog, we will try to find out how many languages do you need to know to communicate with the most amount of people for each country so that you can know what languages to learn the next time you travel.

Let's start off with English. English can get you pretty far in a lot of countries. For example, English is spoken by the majority of people in...

The United States (95.88% of the population)

Canada (83.06% of the population)

Australia (91.10% of people)

New Zealand (97.15% of people)

United Kingdom (98.28% of people)

Ireland (97.52% of people)

These countries have English as their native language, so it is no surprise that English has an absolute majority of speakers in these countries.

Additionally, in other countries, English is also spoken by the majority as a second language for international communication. Such as the case in:

Nigeria (60.64% of people)

The Philippines (63.74% of people)

Germany (55.73% of people)

France (57.25% of people)

Poland (Around 50% of people)

Ghana (67.19% of people),

Malaysia (62.57% of people)

The Netherlands (90.9% of people)

Zimbabwe (90% of people)

Sweden (89% of people)

Kenya (78.68% of people)

Belgium (60% of people)

Israel (84.97% of people)

Singapore (74.21% of people)

Finland (70% of people)

Liberia (82.67% of people)

Jamaica (97.64% of people)

Slovenia (59% of people)

Trinidad and Tobago (87.74% of people)

Guyana (90.55% of people)

Cyprus (73% of people)

South Sudan (94% of people)

Suriname (87.09% of people)

Iceland (98% of people)

Malta (89% of people)

Luxembourg (80% of people)

Barbados (95% of people)

The Bahamas (87.13% of people)

Belize (75.46% of people)

Brunei (60.5% of people)

Solomon Islands (72.9% of people)

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (95% of people)

Grenada (90.91% of people)

Saint Lucia (80% of people)

Antigua and Barbuda (80% of people)

Federated States of Micronesia (57.66% of people)

Dominica (94.03% of people)

Marshall Islands (98.06% of people)

St. Kitts and Nevis (78% of people)

Kiribati (72.91% of people)

Nauru (96.67% of people)

Greece (51% of people)

Estonia (54% of people)

Austria (73% of people)

Norway (90% of people)

Denmark (86% of people)

Sierra Leone (83.53% of people)

Slovakia (58% of people)

Croatia (60% of people)

Albania (51% of people)

Namibia (70% of people)

Seychelles (60% of people)

Zambia (More than 90%)

Also in the disputed country of Kosovo (54% of people)

That was a lot of countries! To better visualize, here is the map with countries where you can communicate in English highlighted in red.

(Little mistake: Kenya and Zambia should be in red but I forgot)

As you can see here, English covers a lot of countries, but it does not cover the entire world, as many other countries don't have a majority english speaking population.

Additionally, many special territories of the english speaking countries mentioned above can also speak english, but with a few exceptions.

For example, English is not very commonly spoken in Greenland, where the majority of people speak Greenlandic. Furthermore, in many French overseas territories, French is more popular and more common than English, So this means that Now, We've got to learn English, French, and Greenlandic.

And by learning french, you can unlock communication with...

the overseas territories of France (where majority speaks french)

Quebec, a province of Canada (where over 90% speak french)

Monaco (96.91% speak French)

Cameroon (Where despite only having 41% of people speaking French, a further 23% speak English as well, so the majority of people in Cameroon will speak either English or French)

Republic of the Congo (60.69% of people)

Djibouti (50% of people)

DR Congo (51.37% of people)

Gabon (80% of people)

Mauritius (72.65% of people)

Tunisia (52.47% of people)

This brings our map to fill in a few more countries and territories.

Despite learning 3 languages, it's still not enough to go to every country. So, we need to increase the numbers.

By learning Spanish you can unlock communication with various country in Latin America and other parts of the world such as:

Spain

Mexico

Cuba

Dominican Republic

Guatemala

Honduras

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Panama

Colombia

Venezuela

Ecuador

Peru

Bolivia

Paraguay

Chile

Argentina

Uruguay

Equatorial Guinea

As well as in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

In each of these countries, the majority speaks Spanish as their native language.

By learning Portuguese, we can unlock communication with:

Brazil

Portugal

Angola

São tomé e principé

By learning Russian, we can unlock communication with:

Russia

Belarus

Kazakhstan

Kyrgyzstan (Around 50% speak it)

It is also spoken by the majority in the disputed state of Transnistria

By learning Mandarin Chinese, you can unlock communication with

China (PRC)

as well as the disputed country of the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan.

Our map now should look like this after learning English, Mandarin Chinese, Greenlandic, French, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Furthermore, we also have to learn a few others. We need to learn...

Japanese to go to Japan

Czech to visit Czech republic

Lithuanian for Lithuania

Latvian for Latvia

Turkish for Türkiye

Ukranian for Ukraine

Georgian for Georgia

Armenian for Armenia

Azerbaijani for Azerbaijan

Turkem for Turkmenistan

Somali for Somalia (as well as the disputed country of somaliland)

Malagasy for Madagascar

Vietnamese for Vietnam

Khmer for Cambodia

Bengali for Bangladesh

Mongolian for Mongolia

Sinhala for Sri Lanka

Dhivehi for Maldives

Tigrinya for Eritrea

Turkmen for Turkmenistan

Uzbek for Uzbekistan

Hungarian for Hungary

Bulgarian to visit Bulgaria and Macedonia (Macedonia is intelligble to bulgarian)

Serbo-croatian for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia

Farsi for Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan (Dari and Tajik is the same language as Farsi)

Romanian for Romania and Moldova

Burmese for Myanmar

Indonesian for Indonesia

Korean for North and South Korea

Nepali for Nepal

Tetum for East Timor

Urdu for Pakistan

Italian for Italy, Vatican City San Marino, and Parts of Switzerland

Swahili for Tanzania and Eastern DRC. Dzongkha for Bhutan

Tswana for Botswana

Amharic for Ethiopia (Despite Ethiopia being a multilingual country, most of the country speaks amharic)

Sango for Central African Republic

Hausa for Niger

Bambara for Mali

Luganda for Uganda

Chewa for Malawi

Sesotho for Lesotho

Swazi for Eswatini

Haitian Creole for Haiti

Wolof for Senegal

Kinyarwanda for Rwanda

Kirundi for Burundi

Guinea bissau creole for Guinea Bissau

Cape verde creole for Cape Verde

Mooré for Burkina Faso

Comorian of Comoros,

Fijian for Fiji,

Samoan for Samoa

Tuvaluan for Tuvalu

Tongan for TOnga

Bislama for Vanuatu

Catalan for Andorra

And in the disputed countries of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the majority speaks Abkhaz and Ossetian, respectively.

After all this, we have currently learned about 67 languages. Here is the updated map.

I've left out some countries to talk about last because the language situation in these countries is rather complicated. Let's first talk about Arabic

In the Arab world, there exists two forms of Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Colloquial Arabic. Despite Modern Standard Arabic being accepted by many as the standard dialect, it is not widely spoken in real life and it is only used on news channels and in formal settings. Colloquial Arabic, on the other hand, is spoken on a daily basis by every. However, these dialects can be drastically different from each other to the point where they have no mutual intelligibility with each other, making Arabic seem like not one language, but a bunch of different languages. In that case, the most popular dialect of Arabic spoken across the Arab world are...

Levantine Arabic for Syria, Jordan, the Palestine region, Lebanon.

Egyptian Arabic for Egypt

Mesopotamian Arabic for Iraq

Gulf Arabic for UAE, Qatar, Kuwait.

Bahrain, despite being in the gulf arabic region, uses its own kind of Arabic called Bahraini Arabic

In Saudi Arabia, due to its size, the dialect groups can be split into three zones

Hejazi Arabic, spoken in the Western regions

Nejdi Arabic spoken in the central region of Saudi Arabia as well as in its capital Riyadh

Gulf Arabic is also spoken in the East.

Omani Arabic for Oman

Yemeni Arabic for Yemen

Sudanese Arabic for Sudan

Chadian Arabic for parts of Northern Chad

And Maghrebi Arabic is spoken in Morroco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Mauritania.

This means, by learning Arabic along with the 12 sub dialects, we can unlock the countries of the arab world as well as Chad, because in southern Chad, they also speak french.

Moving on to the next country with a complicated langauge situation: Switzerland.

For Switzerland, only 40% of the population speaks English, and with the majority (60% of the population) speaking German. However, we have learned French and Italian, and if we learn German, we can unlock Switzerland as well as Lichtenstein, as the majority speak German there.

Another country well known for its linguistic diversity is India.

India has a complicated language situation due to having over 22 languages as official languages. While English is one of them, English is spoken only by around 15% of the entire population. However, around 53.6% of the population speaks Hindi, which is enough to cover half of the population. Be in mind, however, that not every region speaks Hindi, especially in the southern regions, where English or a regional language like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, or Malaylam is prefered.

Moving on to South Africa, where despite having 11 official languages, English is widely used. However, I do recommend picking up a languages like Zulu and Xhosa as these two are also commonly spoken in the eastern regions. So we will learn these two as well.

In Mozambique, while Portuguese is the official language, only 47.4% of people speak it. The next most spoken language is Emakhuwa, so we will learn it too.

Moving on to west africa, Ivory Coast (Côte de Ivoire) has French as an official language, but is only spoken by 36% of the population. The next commonly spoken language is Baoulé, spoken by around 16% of the population, and it is the language of the largest ethnic group of Ivory Coast, so we will learn it as well.

In Guinea, only 27% of people speak French, even though French is an official language. However, we can learn Fula, spoken by around 34% of the population.

In the Gambia, English is the official language, but spoken only by 2.1% of people. Mandinka is more widely spoken, having 38% of people speaking it. Wolof is also spoken as well, by around 18% of people, but we have alreadly learned that, and so we need to learn Mandinka.

In both of our last two countries, Benin and Togo, French is the official language, but spoken by only 33% and 41% of the population, respectively. However, in togo, another commonly spoken language is Ewe spoken by around 22.3% of people. In Benin, Fon, which is another commonly spoken language, is spoken by 24% of the population.

In total, hypothetically, in order to visit every country in the world and communicate with the majority of people, you would have to learn around 78 languages

Please note that this finding is just for fun, and that you don't necessarily have to learn this many languages to enjoy travelling around the world Tools like translator apps, phrase books, guided tours, and more are avaliable to help better your travel experience.