Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world, though possibly second to a combination of the Chinese languages.
Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to over a billion depending on how literacy or mastery is defined and measured.
Non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1.
ReplyDeleteOver 1.4 billion people speak Chinese as their first language.
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