Jameson’s Blog

English is quickly becoming the global language. In China, Yu Minhong has built New Oriental, into the country’s biggest provider of private educational services, with more than 1 students annually, the overwhelming majority learning English. In Chile, the government has said it wants its population to be bilingual in English and Spanish within a generation.

No one knows how many people are learning English. Ten years ago, the British Council estimated 1 billion English learners. A report, English Next, published by the Council in 2006, forecast that the number of English learners would probably peak at around 2 billion by 2016.

How many people already speak English? No one really knows that, either. The table below provides one estimate of first -language speakers from a translation company called Language is Everything.

Language is Everything, Half-year report, July 2007

Top 10 Most Widely-Spoken Languages

Language -followed by -

Number of speakers (as first language)

Number of countries where it is official

Their Alphabet

Chinese Mandarin

873

3 (China, Taiwan, Singapore)

There are between 40,000 and 50,000different Chinese characters

Spanish

322

21 (including Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile)

Roman

English

309

58 (including USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Jamaica, Trinidad &
Tobago, Guyana
Roman

Arabic

206

25 (including Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia)

Arabic

Hindi

177

1 (India)

Sanskrit

Portuguese

177

8 (including Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor)

Roman

Bengali

171

2 (Bangladesh, India)

Bengali

Russian

145

2 (Russia, Belarus)

Cyrillic

Japanese

122

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.