Yesterday was the "European Day of Languages," established by the Council of Europe in 2001 to encourage language learning across the Old Continent, strengthen multilingualism and intercultural understanding, and promote Europe's linguistic variety. According to the European Commission's Eurobarometer study from May 2024 ("Europeans and their languages"), the vast majority of Europeans (86%) feel that everyone should speak at least one second language, and three out of five Europeans (59%) can converse in a foreign language. But which are the most widely spoken languages? According to the same survey, over half of Europeans (47%) and 33% of Italians speak English as a foreign language, representing a considerable increase (5 percentage points) from 2012. Seven out of ten young Europeans can now have a conversation in English, up nine percentage points from a survey conducted twelve years ago. English is regarded as the most important language to learn for children's futures (85% of poll respondents), followed by Spanish, German, French, and Chinese. Following English, the most commonly spoken foreign languages in the EU are French (11%), German (10%), and Spanish (7%). These findings are consistent with those of the "Eurydice Key data 2023" study on language education in schools in Europe, which shows that 98.3% of European lower secondary school children (and increasingly from a young age) learn English.