LONDON: Official statistics show that Polish is the second-most spoken language in England and Wales - a result of the wave of immigration that has brought nearly 1 million Eastern Europeans to the U.K. over the past decade.

Britain's Office of National Statistics says that Polish is considered the "main language" for nearly 550,000 people, or roughly 1 percent of the population.

Because statisticians only began asking questions about foreign language use in the most recent census, there are no past figures with which to compare those published Wednesday.

But news that Polish is England's No. 2 language follows naturally from the mass migration that began when Britain opened its doors to citizens of new European Union member states in 2004.