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As of 2024, there are 57 sovereign states and 28 non-sovereign entities where English is an official language. Many administrative divisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level. Most states where English is an official language are former territories of the British Empire.
The European Union is a supranational union composed of 27 member states. The total English-speaking population of the European Union and the United Kingdom combined (2012) is 256,876,220 [1] (out of a total population of 500,000,000, [2] i.e. 51%) including 65,478,252 native speakers and 191,397,968 non-native speakers, and would be ranked 2nd if it were included.
The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and 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.
Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca, [61] [131] is also regarded as the first world language. [132] [133] English is the world's most widely used language in newspaper publishing, book publishing, international telecommunications, scientific publishing, international trade, mass entertainment, and diplomacy. [133]
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the Anglosphere as "the countries of the world in which the English language and cultural values predominate". [ 7 ] [ b ] However the Anglosphere is usually not considered to include all countries where English is an official language, so it is not synonymous with anglophone .
This category lists countries and territories where English is used as either a first or native language or an official language The main article for this category is English-speaking world . Portals :
This is a list of languages by number of native speakers.. Current distribution of human language families. All such rankings of human languages ranked by their number of native speakers should be used with caution, because it is not possible to devise a coherent set of linguistic criteria for distinguishing languages in a dialect continuum. [1]
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by Winston Churchill, covering the period from Caesar's invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the end of the Second Boer War (1902). [1]