What is the most commonly studied and/or most useful foreign language in the United Kingdom?
The most commonly studied language in the UK is French, with German in second place. Spanish comes a close third and more “exotic” languages such as Russian and Mandarin are gaining in popularity. There is no doubt that both French and German are highly useful languages for any European to know; however, as a linguist who studied French, Spanish and German at school, Spanish and Italian at University and, subsequently, Romanian, Portuguese, Turkish and a clutch of Northern Indian languages, my own experience is that Spanish has been by far the most useful of these, followed – surprisingly perhaps – by Portuguese.
