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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.
English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, whose speakers, called Anglophones, originated in early medieval England on the island of Great Britain. [4] [5] [6] The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain after its Roman occupiers left.
English retains a role comparable to that of an official language. [38] [39] [40] In 1999, the High Court of Justice ruled that English, Arabic and Hebrew were inherited as official languages by Israel, but that English had been removed by the Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948. [41] The Ordinance said:
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.
Of Lebanon's 34 radio stations, 11 have either French or English names. [33] Using photographs from 2015, a 2018 study of the linguistic landscape of Lebanon's capital, Beirut , found that the Arabic script is only used in 20% of storefront's primary text (store's name) and 9% of secondary text (other information, such as opening hours).
In 1972, 54% of Lebanese people said they speak French or English, including 75% of Beirut residents. Of Beirut's bilingual population, 48.5% spoke French and 26% spoke English. [4] Many of the Palestinians in Lebanon were also fluent in English. [4] [needs context] In 2011, 40% of Lebanon's population said that they spoke English non-natively. [1]
Lebanon, [a] officially the Republic of Lebanon, [b] is a country in the Levant region of WestSituated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, [1] it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west; Cyprus lies a short distance from the coastline.
While a number of biblical place names like Jerusalem, Athens, Damascus, Alexandria, Babylon and Rome have been used for centuries, some have changed over the years. Many place names in the Land of Israel, Holy Land and Palestine are Arabised forms of ancient Hebrew and Canaanite place-names used during biblical times [1] [2] [3] or later Aramaic or Greek formations.