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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 [70] (out of a total population of 500,000,000, [71] 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.
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 the most commonly spoken foreign language in 19 out of 25 European Union countries (excluding Ireland) [12] In the EU25, working knowledge of English as a foreign language is clearly leading at 38%, followed by German and French (at 14% each), Russian and Spanish (at 6% each), and Italian (3%). [13] "
Trinidad and Tobago – in the predominantly Trinidadian English Creole-speaking country where Trinidadian English is official, Spanish was introduced as the second language of bilingual traffic signs and is spoken among 5% of the population fluently. [58] and is generally the "first foreign language". [59]
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.
The countries where English is spoken can be grouped into different categories according to how English is used in each country. The "inner circle" [ 72 ] countries with many native speakers of English share an international standard of written English and jointly influence speech norms for English around the world.
A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages. (On this page a national language is followed by parentheses that identify it as a national language status.) Some countries have more than one language with this ...
English remains by far the most widely spoken foreign language throughout Europe. A total of 95% of students in the EU study English at secondary level [77] and 38% of EU citizens state that they have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation (excluding citizens of Ireland, an English-speaking country). A total of 28% of Europeans ...