English is quickly becoming the global language. In China, Yu Minhong has built New Oriental, (
www.neworiental.org), into the country's biggest provider of private educational services, with more than 1 million 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 (
www.britishcouncil.org) 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 (
www.languageiseverything.com).
Language is Everything, Half-year report, July 2007
http://www.languageiseverything.com/language-translation-services/images/Language_is_Everything_2007_hyr.pdf Top 10 Most Widely-Spoken Languages
Language Number of speakers (as first language) Number of countries where it is official Alphabet Chinese Mandarin
873 million
3 (China, Taiwan, Singapore)
There are between 40,000 and 50,000
different Chinese characters
Spanish
322 million
21 (including Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile)
Roman
English
309 Million
58 (including USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, New Zealand, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana
Roman
Arabic
206 Million
25 (including Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia)
Arabic
Hindi
177 million
1 (India)
Sanskrit
Portuguese
177 Million
8 (including Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor)
Roman
Bengali
171 Million
2 (Bangladesh, India)
Bengali
Russian
145 Million
2 (Russia, Belarus)
Cyrillic
Japanese
122 million
1 (Japan)
There are four: kanji (Chinese characters),
hiragana, katakana and romaji (Roman)
German
95 Million
6 (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium,
Luxembourg, Liechtenstein)
Roman (plus , for double s in lower case)dy
It is clear that many more people speak a language that just the first-language speakers, and that English is certainly spoken by more people world-wide than Spanish.
Latin was once the shared language over a vast area, but that was only in Europe, western Asia, and North Africa.
"Never in recorded history has a language been as widely spoken as English is today," says Steven Moore, Co-Founder and Dean of Global Business English. "The reason millions are learning English is because it is the language of international business and therefore the key to advancement and prosperity."
It is not just that many of the world's largest companies conduct their business in English, it is the world's second language, how Chinese speak to Brazilians and Germans speak to Indonesians. English is truly the language of global business.
