Portuguese speak more and more (and better) foreign languages

English, French and Spanish are, in this order, the most well-known languages in Portugal. The data are from the INE

Portugal was the European Union country that most increased the proportion of the adult population with knowledge of foreign languages in the last decade, with 70% of Portuguese saying they know a language other than their mother tongue, according to the INE.

Last year, 71.8% of people aged between 18 and 64 stated that they knew a language other than their mother tongue. In 2007 that proportion was 52% and in 2011 of 61.3%, according to the publication "Education and training of adults in Portugal: a statistical portrait of a decade - 2016".

In 2016, "Portugal occupied an intermediate position in all European countries in terms of knowledge of foreign languages and was the one that most increased the proportion of the population with knowledge of foreign languages (20.3 percentage points) between 2007 and 2016" the data of the National Statistics Institute (INE) underlines.

Among the most widely spoken foreign languages by the Portuguese, English (59.6%), French (21.5%) and Spanish (14.8%) stand out.

"Isolating English, 33.8% of those who knew this language could perceive and communicate reasonably and produce simple texts and 25.6% dominated it perfectly (in oral and written form)," says INE.

Knowledge of foreign languages was higher for the younger population (91.6% of the population 18 to 24 years), student (97.7%) and better educated (97.4% for the population with higher education).

INE also highlights the decrease in the rate of non-participation in any education, training and learning activity, which fell by 40 percentage points between 2007 (48.2%) and 2016 (8.2%).

The socio-demographic profile of non-participants remained the same: older, less educated and with equally less educated parents, inactive (excluding students), who only knew their mother tongue and had no regular reading habits.

Analyzing the inter-generational transmission of education, the study reveals that the level of education of the mother, when compared to that of the father, has a greater impact on the probability of a person pursuing a higher education.

The data for 2016 show that those who have a mother who has completed higher education have, on average, a higher probability (39.1 points) of having also completed higher education (28.8 percentage points in the case of the father).