This Indian Metropolis Has More English Speakers Than Any UK City. Take A Guess

A BBC television show revealed that Mumbai surpasses all cities in the UK when it comes to the number of English speakers in the world. In the episode of the show titled Quite Interesting (QI), presenter Sandi Toksvig shared that the UK ranks only sixth worldwide in terms of English-speaking populations. This clip, which originally aired last year, has recently resurfaced and gained attention on X.

During the discussion, British comedian Sara Pascoe humourously commented, “I think we speak it best,” when the topic of English-speaking cities came up. Toksvig then said, “Which city in the world do we think has the most English speakers? It’s Mumbai.” She wrapped up with a witty remark, saying, “In fact, in terms of population of English speakers, the UK only comes sixth worldwide. That is colonialism for you.”

The revelation about Mumbai having more English speakers than any other city in the world found its way to Reddit, sparking a lively debate. A user posted, “Mumbai has the most English speakers compared to any city in the world! Is this true? I could not validate this. Saw this info at the link below, broadcasted on BBC QI series.”

The post quickly gained attention, with Redditors flooding the comment section to share their thoughts.

One user responded, “It’s totally believable just because of the large population we have. India could easily be the largest English speaking country in the world. However, % of English speakers would be a better metric for such comparisons.”

Another added, “I am surprised no one mentioned it but Mumbai is the only true cosmopolitan city in this country. You have people from practically every corner of India in this city, and when this happens a single language usually becomes a baseline, English and Hindi are the most common denominators here. On another note, I love that Marathi is still thriving amidst all this.”

Adding to the conversation, someone else quipped “It is a big city by population and English is kinda the official business language here. I can believe this stat. Depends on how big of an area they’re considering Mumbai though. Because surely New York City would have more English speakers than Mumbai.”

One individual highlighting the job market wrote, “Most of the jobs in Mumbai require a working knowledge of English. Mumbai has to be the city with the highest number of multilingual people in the world. Everyone knows at least 3 languages.”

“If it’s true, it’s great. All those saying the quality of English spoken is poor, at least we have a decent number of people who understand the global language. And criticising the quality means expecting us Indians who are polyglots (which is impressive enough) to speak in Anglo Saxon English,” another pointed out.