Tony Gregory
Ceist:668 Mr. Gregory asked the Minister for Education and Science the languages spoken by non-nationals here; and the most prevalent of these languages. [8072/01]
Written Answers. - Non-National Languages.
Minister for Education and Science (Dr. Woods): With non-nationals from 120 countries now in the country, the range of languages is obviously large. The languages spoken by non-nationals are English, French, Romanian, Russian, Chinese – both Cantonese and Mandarin – Polish, Portuguese, Czech, Albanian, Arabic, Serbo-Croat (Bosnia), Spanish, Farsi, Swahili, Somali, Persian, Bengali, Pushtun (Afghans), Kurdish, Lingala (Congo), Kikongo (Congo), Belarussian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Berber, Azerbaijani, Burmese, Khmer, Urdu, Tamil, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian.
The eight most common languages spoken by non-nationals are French, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Czechoslovakian, Albanian and Arabic.
While these lists are comprehensive, there may be small numbers among the non-nationals who speak languages other than the above.