The British Council study found that more than three-quarters of the UK public cannot hold conversations in the top 10 languages deemed crucial to the country's future economic standing, which include Spanish, Arabic, French, Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish, and Japanese. Only 15% of respondents spoke French, while less than 6% spoke German or Spanish. In response, the British Council urged the government and businesses to develop education policies that better facilitate language learning and to harness the language skills of minority communities to address the UK's growing language gap compared to other nations.