Tatar the second most popular language in Russia
The map of the world's second languages created by the MoveHub website illustrates the popularity of languages and language families around the globe. In Russia, Tatar is named as the second most spoken language, while Russian remains important in the majority of the ex-Soviet countries.
The infographic, which was originally created by MoveHub.com, a resource for people who want to move abroad, and republished by Daily Mail, shows the importance of languages in shaping the cultural identity of a country. The results indicate not only the current state of things but also an impact of global historical events on the certain regions.
Predictably, Russian is the second language of countries that were ruled by the Soviet Union, such as Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Baltic States, etc. In Russia itself, Tatar is the second most popular language. According to the Russian Census of 2010, there were 4,280,718 of Tatar speakers in the country (however, this amounts to only 3% of the country's population). The number of speakers has contracted since 2002 when it was over 5 million.
In Europe, people speak English in France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Hungary and Poland. In the U.K., it is Polish as a result of immigration flows. Romania, Serbia and Slovakia, who used to be members of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, still hold Hungarian as their second language.
As for America, Spanish is the second most popular language in the United States and Brazil. The native Quechua is popular in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. In Canada, French is the second most spoken language (and the country's official one).
Unexpectedly, the second language of Australia is Mandarin Chinese due to a large Chinese population in the region. In Africa, the majority speaks English (like in Egypt and Sudan), Italian (Libya) or French (Algeria) due to colonialism.
In summary, English is the world's most common second language i 55 countries speaking it. French and Russian are second and third with 14 and 13 respectively.