90 Languages Spoken at SLU-Madrid

by Isaiah Voss

Linguistic diversity makes the Madrid Campus a premier polyglot enclave in Spain.

With nearly 100 languages, dialects and varieties, SLU-Madrid is an inviting space for language learning. Whether a beginner or advanced expert, Billikeños speak and study languages at varying levels.

Four students smile while one holds a phone for a selfie in front of a stone structure in the city of Madrid.

A group of SLU-Madrid students takes a selfie at the entrance to the city's Plaza Mayor. Photo by Luana Fischer.

Degree-seeking students, faculty and staff speak over 40 languages alone. Of the world's major languages, many varieties of the same mother tongue are present on campus. In order of prevalence, there are fifteen Spanish, ten Arabic, seven French, six English, four Portuguese and two Russian varieties.

Living languages spoken by faculty, staff and students are Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, English, Filipino, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lebanese, Lithuanian, Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Montenegrin, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Turkmen and Ukrainian.

SLU-Madrid's faculty and staff welcome hundreds of study abroad and degree-seeking students each academic term.

Learn how to become part of SLU-Madrid's multilingual community on the Admissions page.