Which languages should you learn if you want to be sociable in the peloton? In days gone by, French would have been enough to get you understood by the vast majority of riders. But in the post-war years, it’s become more complicated. In 2014, the cyclist riding alongside you is more likely to be a native English-speaker than a native Italian speaker. And you might want to spend some time studying Scandinavian and Slavonic languages as well….

This chart attempts to show the percentage of native speakers for each language and as such is far from perfect. Several countries are multilingual which presents a particular difficulty. I’ve attempted to distribute Swiss riders equally between French, German and Italian, for example. Canadian riders are nearly always classed as English-speaking unless they have a very obviously French name. Here’s the list I used for each language:-

English-speaking countries

United Kingdom

Ireland

Australia

New Zealand

Canada

United States

French-speaking countries

France

Monaco

Belgium

Switzerland

Andorra

(Canada)

Spanish-speaking countries

Spain

Mexico

Colombia

Venezuela

Argentina

Peru

Ecuador

Chile

Costa Rica

Puerto Rico

Uruguay

Panama

Bolivia

German-speaking countries

Germany

Austria

Switzerland

Liechtenstein

Italian-speaking countries

Italy

Switzerland

San Marino

DATA SOURCE: WWW.CYCLINGARCHIVES.COM