Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
English is the third-most spoken native language, after Standard Chinese and Spanish; [8] it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states (such as India, Ireland, and Canada).
Fluency in 42 languages. Powell Alexander Janulus (born 1939) is a Canadian polyglot who lives in White Rock, British Columbia, and entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 for fluency in 42 languages. [1] To qualify, he had to pass a two-hour conversational fluency test with a native speaker of each of the 42 languages he spoke at that time.
Ethnologue (2024) [] Ethnologue lists the following languages as having 50 million or more total speakers. [ 4 ] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing several varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and Chinese. Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2024 [ 4 ]
English is the most widespread language in the country due to the many different languages spoken, with 60 million speakers. [5] This includes speakers of an English creole, accounting for 51% to 57% of the total population. [5] [6] It is estimated 10% of Nigerians speak English as a first language. [7] Pakistan: 220,892,331: 108,044,691: 48.91 ...
InternationalEnglishis the concept of using the English languageas a global means of communicationsimilar to an international auxiliary language, and often refers to the movement towards an international standard for the language.[1] Related and sometimes synonymous terms include: Global English, World English, Common English, Continental ...
The global language system is the "ingenious pattern of connections between language groups". [1] Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan developed this theory in 2001 in his book Words of the World: The Global Language System and according to him, "the multilingual connections between language groups do not occur haphazardly, but, on the contrary, they constitute a surprisingly strong and efficient ...
Ethnologue (2024) The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 27th edition of Ethnologue published in 2024. [7] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties, such as Arabic, Lahnda, Persian, Malay, Pashto, and ...