Slovenians typically score very well in international comparisons when it comes to foreign language proficiency and the latest survey by the national Statistics Office released on European Day of Languages confirms multilinguality is indeed very deeply rooted.

Nearly one in five adult residents of Slovenia say they speak or understand one foreign language, 23% said two, 19% three, 11% four and as many as one in four say they use or understand five or more foreign languages.

English is understood by 74% of adults in Slovenia, while the second most commonly spoken foreign language is Croatian, followed by German, Serbo-Croatian, Serbian and Italian.

Meanwhile, 96% of the respondents said they spoke or understood at least one foreign language, most of them English. The share is lowest in those with primary education and highest in those with tertiary education.

Of those who said they spoke or understood one or more foreign languages, 46% said their knowledge was above-average, while 37% said it was average or relatively fluent.

Slovenian is the mother tongue for 84% of the country's residents, followed by Bosnian, Serbian and Albanian. Some 5% say they have two mother tongues.