United Kingdom: linguistic neighbours

Shares an official language with 66 countries; closest tie Ireland.

Data as of 1 Nov 2026 · 195 partner countries · CLDR 49, Glottolog 5.3, States sheet · USITC DICL v2

Country

Who shares a language with United Kingdom

Shared-language index of every country with United Kingdom; the legend is the key.

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Small territories are not drawn at this scale.

Nearest

The countries whose people can talk most easily with United Kingdom's.

How this is measured

Shared language is the common spoken language index from the USITC DICL: the sum over languages of the share of people in United Kingdom who speak it times the share in the other country, native or acquired. It is not a probability and can exceed 1, because the shares overlap. Proximity measures how close different native languages sit on the language tree, so it is low for same-language pairs and highest for related-but-different languages. Countries under 1 million residents are left out of both boards.

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Ireland

Official language in common · 5.5M residents

0.97

Australia

Official language in common · 27.8M residents

0.95

United States

Official language in common · 341.8M residents

0.91

Cameroon

Official language in common · 29.4M residents

0.89

Denmark

6.0M residents

0.86

New Zealand

Official language in common · 5.4M residents

0.83

Sweden

10.6M residents

0.82

Canada

Official language in common · 41.4M residents

0.81

Netherlands

18.2M residents

0.77

Norway

5.6M residents

0.74

#						Pairs
1	Ireland	0.97	yes	0.03	5.5M	pairs
2	Australia	0.95	yes	0.03	27.8M	pairs
3	United States	0.91	yes	0.04	341.8M	pairs
4	Cameroon	0.89	yes	0.00	29.4M	pairs
5	Denmark	0.86	—	0.34	6.0M	pairs
6	New Zealand	0.83	yes	0.03	5.4M	pairs
7	Sweden	0.82	—	0.35	10.6M	pairs
8	Canada	0.81	yes	0.07	41.4M	pairs
9	Netherlands	0.77	—	0.56	18.2M	pairs
10	Norway	0.74	—	0.36	5.6M	pairs
11	Papua New Guinea	0.71	yes	0.00	10.2M	pairs
12	Austria	0.68	—	0.48	9.2M	pairs
13	Finland	0.67	—	0.02	5.7M	pairs
14	Sierra Leone	0.66	yes	0.00	9.1M	pairs
15	Switzerland	0.64	—	0.35	9.1M	pairs
16	Singapore	0.59	yes	0.01	6.1M	pairs
17	Puerto Rico	0.58	yes	0.15	3.2M	pairs
18	Slovenia	0.58	—	0.22	2.1M	pairs
19	Germany	0.58	—	0.48	83.5M	pairs
20	Liberia	0.55	yes	0.00	5.2M	pairs

Farthest

The countries with the least language in common with United Kingdom.

How this is measured

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Myanmar

51.4M residents

0.00

China

1404.9M residents

0.00

Indonesia

288.3M residents

0.00

Taiwan

23.2M residents

0.00

South Sudan

Official language in common · 15.8M residents

0.00

Iran

87.1M residents

0.00

Turkmenistan

7.1M residents

0.00

Mozambique

35.0M residents

0.00

Japan

122.9M residents

0.00

East Timor

1.4M residents

0.00

#						Pairs
1	Myanmar	0.00	—	0.00	51.4M	pairs
2	China	0.00	—	0.00	1404.9M	pairs
3	Indonesia	0.00	—	0.00	288.3M	pairs
4	Taiwan	0.00	—	0.00	23.2M	pairs
5	South Sudan	0.00	yes	0.00	15.8M	pairs
6	Iran	0.00	—	0.16	87.1M	pairs
7	Turkmenistan	0.00	—	0.04	7.1M	pairs
8	Mozambique	0.00	—	0.02	35.0M	pairs
9	Japan	0.00	—	0.00	122.9M	pairs
10	East Timor	0.00	—	0.00	1.4M	pairs
11	Angola	0.00	—	0.07	38.8M	pairs
12	Uzbekistan	0.00	—	0.04	39.0M	pairs
13	Kyrgyzstan	0.00	—	0.03	7.4M	pairs
14	Turkey	0.00	—	0.03	86.1M	pairs
15	Mongolia	0.00	—	0.00	3.6M	pairs
16	Georgia	0.00	—	0.05	3.9M	pairs
17	Azerbaijan	0.00	—	0.01	10.3M	pairs
18	Ethiopia	0.00	—	0.00	111.7M	pairs
19	Belarus	0.00	—	0.25	9.1M	pairs
20	Ukraine	0.01	—	0.25	28.7M	pairs

Where these numbers come from

Pair figures come from the USITC Dynamic International Country Linguistics database, version 2 (CC BY 4.0). See Method.

Unicode CLDR territoryInfo (release 49) (Unicode License v3). Country-level language shares, official status and Tier 3 reach (populationPercent is total speakers, first plus second language).
Glottolog 5.3 (CC BY 4.0). Language names, ISO 639-3 codes, families.
Database of International and Intranational Linguistic distances (DICL v2), USITC (CC BY 4.0). Country-pair common spoken language and linguistic proximity (neighbours, linked-world score, pairs pages).
States (ISO 3166-2) sheet, MetroAreas workbook (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation). States, populations and the four language labels per state.
Natural Earth 1:110m Admin 0 Countries (nvkelso/natural-earth-vector) (Public domain). World outline for the language maps (world-110m.geojson, properties reduced to iso3 and name).
Country layer of this site (countries.json workbook population, World Bank iso2 and iso3, OWID country-population) (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation; World Bank CC BY 4.0; OWID CC BY). Country population, iso2 and /countries slug joined onto languages, countries and families (speakers = share x population).