Why bother learning another language when artificial intelligence (AI) promises the ‘Babel fish’-like facility to translate conversations in real-time? Well…
In Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Babel fish was a “small, yellow and leech-like” creature that users drop into their ears to instantly communicate in any language. Today, you can use AI software on your phone paired with smart earbuds to approximate this experience. Sure, it’s prone to errors and lacks the judgment skills of a human interpreter, but evangelists would have us believe that it’s only a matter of time before developers iron out these wrinkles.
And yet, language learning isn’t dead. Duolingo maintains 83 million monthly users, and in fact, people use AI to learn languages rather than simply translate them. One AI app promises to use foreign-language Netflix content to bridge the language gap, while other students are using ChatGPT as a learning buddy on whom to practice their budding Spanish and French skills.
Why do they persist? The same reasons you still play word games. Language is more than a tool — it’s an art, it’s culture, it’s human. Whether reading or conversing, using a foreign language is fun and rewarding. And then there are the mental boosts. Children who’ve learned a second language have been shown to have improved cognitive performance and social understanding, while learning languages throughout adulthood keeps you cognitively fit and may delay the effects of dementia.
So, given that we’re not giving up foreign languages to the robots just yet, which languages are people around the world most eager to learn in 2024?
What We Did
We compiled a list of the top 50 most spoken languages based on our previous article, ‘The 100 Most-Spoken Languages in the World,’ and found the monthly Google search volume for people looking to learn those languages. We then ranked the first and second most searched language lesson for every country.
Key Findings
- The language that the United States most wants to learn is Spanish, and the second most is Japanese.
- People in Canada are most interested in learning French and Japanese, while Australians are taking to Google looking to learn Japanese and Spanish, in that order.
- Korean is the most sought-after language in countries across Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
- Spanish is the most searched-for language in Spain, and English tops the list in the UK, denoting perhaps the presence of residents from other countries looking to adapt and better integrate into their new culture.
Which Language Does Every Country Want to Learn?
The English language is not what it used to be. In the 2021 edition of this report, we found 98 countries that wanted to learn English more than any other language, but now that figure has fallen to 63. Arabic is top in 15 countries, all in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, up from just seven in 2021. Germany is top in 16 countries, and Spanish is top in 12.
Why the fall in English learning? The EF English Proficiency Index notes that while English proficiency is growing in the workforce, it is declining among young people and in East Asia. This fall is “likely symptomatic of broader political and demographic shifts as well as growing confidence questioning Western cultural hegemony in education,” according to that report’s authors.
Which Language Does Every Country in North America Want to Learn?
Seven of the 14 North American countries with available data are keenest on learning English, five want Spanish, and Canada and the Bahamas want French.
Last time we checked, the U.S. most wanted to learn Japanese. Today, it is Spanish. The U.S. is the world’s fifth-largest Spanish-speaking country, but there are imbalances in the language distribution that might drive Americans to learn. For example, just 24% of Latino adults can only converse in Spanish “a little or not at all,” and a little over half of the Hispanics in this situation have been made to feel bad about it by a fellow Hispanic. A lack of Spanish-speaking doctors and teachers is a further issue among the Hispanic community.
Which Language Does Every Country in South America Want to Learn?
In South America, six countries most want to speak English. This is the same number as in our previous report, but Peru and Paraguay have newly joined this cohort in place of Guyana and Suriname.
More emphatically, no longer do any South American countries want to learn Korean, Portuguese or Spanish as they did last time around. Instead, Chinese has entered the fray via Venezuela and Guyana, where it is the language people most want to learn. Chinese-run Confucius Institutes have sprung up in the region since 2006, offering Mandarin lessons, summer camps in China and scholarships. Many South Americans see China as a promising source of job, academic and business opportunities.
Which Language Does Every Country in Europe Want to Learn?
Some 20 of the 42 European countries in our study most want to learn English. This includes the UK, for whom Spanish was previously the most desirable language to learn. With time passing since Brexit, migration to the UK often requires a greater commitment than previously, when EU citizens could travel back and forth more freely. Those who have settled may feel stronger pressure to perfect their grasp of the language to secure their future by applying for citizenship.
There are 12 European countries that most want to learn German, six Spanish and two Russian (Russia and Lithuania). Only the Netherlands most wants to learn French, and only Switzerland is looking to learn Italian.
Which Language Does Every Country in Middle East & Central Asia Want to Learn?
In this region, ten countries most want to learn Arabic, while seven most want to learn English. This follows a 50/50 split between the two languages in this region last time we checked. More than 300 million people speak Arabic worldwide, and the number of people speaking Arabic at home in the U.S. rose by 581% between 1980 and 2021.
“The more you learn, the more fun it gets,” Imara, a Washington State student of Arabic, told the Qatar Foundation International, “and I think that’s especially true with Arabic. It connects you to such a beautiful culture.”
Which Language Does Every Country in The Rest of Asia and Oceania Want to Learn?
Australia’s most wanted language is Japanese, while New Zealanders want to learn Spanish more than any other language — having preferred Japanese last time we checked, in 2021. Only one other regional country — South Korea — also most wants to learn Japanese, marking a fall from six countries wishing to learn Japanese last time around.
The English language has also fallen in popularity, with several South and Southeast Asian countries now preferring to learn the Korean language. Korean overtook Italian to become Duolingo’s sixth most-studied language in 2023, thanks largely to a 75% leap in India. Duolingo reports that Asian languages, in general, are on the rise. The growth in Korean may be due to Hallyu — the Korean Wave of internationally popular dramas and pop music. The country is even launching a ‘Hallyu Visa’ for foreigners to come and join local talent schools.
Which Language Does Every Country in Africa Want to Learn?
Zulu continues to be the language one African country wants to learn more than any other — but while that was Malawi last time around, now it’s South Africa. It is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages. However, language is a highly sensitive identity issue in South Africa, and one leading university controversially made it compulsory to learn Zulu in 2013.
The share of African countries who most want to learn English has fallen from 75.7% in 2021 to 57.1% in 2024.
The Second Most Popular Language To Learn in Every Country
Next, we identified each country’s second most popular language to learn. English occupies this position in 30 countries, German in 21, Spanish in 13 and Arabic in 11.
In the United States, Japanese is the second most desirable language to learn. Asians are the “fastest growing racial and ethnic group” in the U.S., and pop culture platforms continue to import or even co-produce Japan-related properties, as was the case with the recent TV adaptation of Shōgun.
The uniqueness of the Japanese language draws attention to the shortcomings of AI translation. One hotly-topped Babel pin “spewed gibberish” when tested by The Verge’s reviewers, who noted the difficulty in finding consistent definitions of some words: “In Japanese,” they wrote, “the word daijoubu can mean “That’s okay,” “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” “Yes,” “No, thank you,” “Everything’s going to be okay” and “Don’t worry,” depending on how it’s said.”
Bons Mots
“I was proud of myself and of the manner in which, over decades, I had come to be able to express myself clearly, strongly and with a deeply felt voice in a tongue that was not my mother tongue,” writes cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter on writing condolence notes to a late friend’s family. “When I was writing in Italian, I was thinking in Italian, not in English,” he adds.
In an age of automated communication, concludes Hofstadter, curiosity towards foreign languages and the process of learning are “a major part of what it is to be human and alive.”
To explore the languages that each country wants to learn the most, please use the interactive table below.
Methodology & Sources
We compiled a list of the top 50 most-spoken languages based on our previous article, ‘The 100 Most-Spoken Languages in the World.’
We then translated the following phrases into 119 languages covering the countries in our dataset:
- [Language Name] language (e.g., "English language")
- Study [Language Name] (e.g., "Study English")
- Learn [Language Name] (e.g., "Learn English")
We then used Semrush to gather the monthly Google search volumes estimated for those phrases translated into one of each country's official or widely used languages.
Finally, we scaled these figures relative to the number of internet users in each country and the Google Search engine market share (if the market share was 50%, we doubled the search volume.)
This data analysis was completed at the end of May 2024.
