Punjabi and Urdu are 3rd and 4th-most spoken languages in Britain

Polish is the second-most spoken language in England and Wales, new figures from the 2011 census revealed on Wednesday, followed by Punjabi and Urdu.

Over 92 percent of residents spoke English as their main language, and the majority of the rest spoke it well, although 138,000 residents -- less than half a percent -- did not speak English at all, the Office for National Statistics said.

One percent of the population, or 546,000 people, listed Polish as their main language, a reflection of the wave of eastern European migrants who moved to Britain after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004.

Polish speakers were concentrated in London, which unsurprisingly had the highest proportion of non-native English speakers. Twenty-two percent, or 1.7 million people, listed a main language other than English in the capital.

The figures are likely to fuel a row over immigration from Bulgaria and Romania, as the British government prepares for the lifting of controls on new EU arrivals at the end of the year.

Nationwide, Punjabi was the third-most spoken language, spoken by 273,000 people or half of one percent, concentrated in the West Midlands, where it is the second most popular language.

Urdu was in fourth place, spoken by 269,000 people, followed by Bengali (221,000), Gujarati (213,000), Arabic (159,000), French (147,000), Chinese excluding Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese (141,000), and Portuguese (133,000).

The next ten most popular languages are Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Italian, Somali, Lithuanian, German, Persian / Farsi, Tagalog / Filipino, and Romanian.

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