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The relevant wikipedia page [0] puts it thusly: > For example, English has about 340 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be sai
by yoo1I 10y ago
The relevant wikipedia page [0] puts it thusly:
> For example, English has about 340 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as 2 billion speakers.
This statistic is based on research[1] from 2008 which summarizes it's abstract with this sentence:;
> In short, we have moved in 25 years from a fifth to a quarter to a third of the world's population being speakers of English.
So, not quite the majority.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...
[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1742576&fileId=S0266078408000023 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
- danieldk 10y agoMoreover, I am not sure how accurate these numbers are in practice. E.g. I live in Germany. Most Germans (in West-Germany) had English in high school. So, according to these statistics they are probably part of the 2 billion. Since I am not a native speaker of German, I sometimes try to start a conversation in English. For the far majority speaking English is difficult or they don't speak English at all, including people with a higher education (e.g. GPs). I can fully understand, since I had five years of German in high school, but since I had rarely practiced since, I had similar difficulties speaking German.
- morgante 10y agoThey might not be fluent, but most Germans could have a basic conversation in English. English is the global language. A Korean pilot working for a German carrier landing a plane in Costa Rica will be speaking English.