The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, one billion to two billion people spoke English, [1] [2] making it the largest language by number of speakers, the third largest language by number of native speakers, and the most widespread language geographically. The countries in which English is the native language of most people are sometimes termed the Anglosphere. Speakers of English are called Anglophones.
England and the Scottish Lowlands, a country and a region of the United Kingdom, are the birthplace of the English language; the modern form of the language has been spread around the world since the 17th century, first by the worldwide influence of England and later the United Kingdom, and then by that of the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media of these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional fields, such as science, navigation and law. [3]
The United States and India have the most total English speakers, with 306 million and 265 million, respectively. These are followed by Pakistan (104 million), the United Kingdom (68 million), and Nigeria (60 million). [4] As of 2022, there were about 400 million native speakers of English. [5] Including people who speak English as a second language, estimates of the total number of Anglophones vary from 1.5 billion to 2 billion. [2] David Crystal calculated in 2003 that non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of three to one. [6]
Besides the major varieties of English—American, British, Canadian, Australian, Irish, New Zealand English—and their sub-varieties, countries such as South Africa, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from English-based creole languages to Standard English. Other countries and territories, such as Ghana, also use English as their primary official language even though it is not the native language of most of the people.
English is the primary natively spoken language in several countries and territories. Five of the largest of these are sometimes described as the "core Anglosphere"; [7] [8] [9] they are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The term "Anglosphere" can sometimes be extended to include other countries and territories where English or an English Creole language is also the primary native language and English is the primary language of government and education, such as Ireland, Gibraltar, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. [10]
While English is also spoken by a majority of people as a second language in a handful of countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, these countries are not considered part of the English-speaking world as the language is still viewed primarily as a foreign tongue and does not serve an important cultural role in society. [11]
English is an official language ( de facto and de jure ) of the following countries and territories. [12]
Although not official, English is also an important language in some former colonies and protectorates of the British Empire where it is used as an administrative language, such as Bahrain, Brunei, Egypt, Kuwait, Malaysia, Qatar, Sri Lanka and United Arab Emirates.
Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been called a "world language", the lingua franca of the modern era, [13] and while it is not an official language in most countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a foreign language. [6] [14] It is, by international treaty, the official language for aeronautical [15] and maritime [16] communications. English is one of the official languages of the United Nations and many other international organizations, including the International Olympic Committee. It is also one of two co-official languages for astronauts (besides the Russian language) serving on board the International Space Station.[ citation needed ]
English is studied most often in the European Union, and the perception of the usefulness of foreign languages among Europeans is 67% in favour of English, ahead of 17% for German and 16% for French (as of 2012 [update] ). In some of the non–English-speaking EU countries, the following percentages of adults claimed to be able to converse in English in 2012: 90% in the Netherlands; 89% in Malta; 86% in Sweden and Denmark; 73% in Cyprus, Croatia, and Austria; 70% in Finland; and over 50% in Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Germany. In 2012, excluding native speakers, 38% of Europeans consider that they can speak English. [17]
Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world; English is the most commonly used language in the sciences, [13] with Science Citation Index reporting as early as 1997 that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking countries.
In publishing, English literature predominates considerably, with 28% of all books published in the world [Leclerc 2011][ full citation needed ] and 30% of web content in 2011 (down from 50% in 2000). [14]
The increasing use of the English language globally has had a large impact on many other languages, leading to language shift and language death, [18] and to claims of linguistic imperialism.[ citation needed ] English itself has become more open to language shift as multiple regional varieties feed back into the language as a whole. [19]
Spanish or Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain, and about 600 million when including speakers as a second language. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico.
The United States does not have an official language. English and Spanish are the most widely used languages in the U.S.
The French language is spoken as a minority language in the United States. Roughly 2.1 million Americans over the age of five reported speaking the language at home in a federal 2010 estimate, making French the fourth most-spoken language in the nation behind English, Spanish, and Chinese.
The Anglosphere is the Anglo-American sphere of influence, with a core group of nations that today maintain close political, diplomatic and military co-operation. While the nations included in different sources vary, the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with the sphere of anglophones, though commonly included nations are those that were formerly part of the British Empire and retained the English language and English Common Law.
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to, or descent from England, English culture, the English people or the English language, such as in the term Anglosphere. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British descent in Anglo-America, the Anglophone Caribbean, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, and New Zealand. It is used in Canada to differentiate between French speaking Canadians (Francophones), located mainly in Quebec but found across Canada, and English speaking Canadians (Anglophones), also located across Canada, including in Quebec. It is also used in the United States to distinguish the Latino population from the non-Latino white majority.
This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the German language, regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it is spoken. In addition to the Germanosphere in Europe, German-speaking minorities are present in many other countries and on all six inhabited continents.
Latin Americans are the citizens of Latin American countries.
The Welsh are an ethnic group native to Wales. Wales is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The majority of people living in Wales are British citizens.
This article details the geographical distribution of Russian-speakers. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the Russian language often became a matter of controversy. Some Post-Soviet states adopted policies of derussification aimed at reversing former trends of Russification, while Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko and the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin reintroduced Russification policies in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively.
In linguistics, a sprachraum is a geographical region where a common first language, with dialect varieties, or group of languages is spoken.
English is the predominant language and a de facto official language of New Zealand. Almost the entire population speak it either as first language speakers or proficiently as a second language. The New Zealand English dialect is most similar to Australian English in pronunciation, with some key differences. The Māori language of the indigenous Māori people was made the first de jure official language in 1987. New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) has been an official language since 2006. Many other languages are used by New Zealand's minority ethnic communities.
English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England. The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain.
The British diaspora consists of people of English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx and Channel Islands ancestral descent who live outside of the United Kingdom and its Crown Dependencies.
The Scottish people or Scots are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. In the following two centuries, Celtic-speaking Cumbrians of Strathclyde and Germanic-speaking Angles of Northumbria became part of Scotland. In the High Middle Ages, during the 12th-century Davidian Revolution, small numbers of Norman nobles migrated to the Lowlands. In the 13th century, the Norse-Gaels of the Western Isles became part of Scotland, followed by the Norse of the Northern Isles in the 15th century.
Many countries and national censuses currently enumerate or have previously enumerated their populations by languages, native language, home language, level of knowing language or a combination of these characteristics.
The French language became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the language of European diplomacy and international relations.
This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the Italian language, regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it is spoken. In addition to the Italian-speaking area in Europe, Italian-speaking minorities are present in few countries.
...the core Anglosphere states – the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand...
...from what might be called the "core" Anglosphere nations: Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States;