Fact Check: Bengali Has Not Been Declared As The Second Official Language Of London

A viral news claiming Bengali to be the second official language of London after English, is being circulated on various social media platforms, especially Facebook.

The same news has also been reported by a regional news organisation called eibangla24.com

As per the report, since more than 71609 people speak Bengali in London, this major decision has been taken.

On another portal, Asian Voice.com. the article came out with the headline “Bengali announced as the second most spoken language in London.”

According to them, Bengali is officially the second language of London, with around 71,609 residents of the city speaking it.

Claim

Bengali is the second language of London and around 71,609 people in London speak Bengali.

Fact Check

According to the 2011 UK census, Bangladeshi population in London was around 222,127, which represents almost 49.2% of the total Bangladeshi population in UK. Also, according to the same census report, 49.5% of British Bangladeshis consider Bengali (includes Sylheti and Chatgaya dialects) as their main language while 47.9% stated English.

With a population of 222,127 Bangladeshis in 2011, London cannot have only 71,609 Bengali speaking people in 2019, the number has to be much higher.

According to the last census report of 2016, Arabic was the second official language of London followed by Spanish, Chinese and Polish. Bengali is nowhere in the top 10 list. Therefore, it is very unlikely for Bengali to jump to the second spot within a span of only 3 years.

Any official confirmation can also not come before 2021 because the UK census report is released after every 5 years. The last one came out in 2016. If any such big decision was made, it would have been covered by reputed media organisations.

The team of ‘eibangla24’ was not very sure about the source from which they published. After speaking to saurav sinha we got to know that the media organisation doesn’t know the origin of this information.

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