Native English speakers of the world

Extract

[...] Thirdly, Professor David Crystal who is a linguist says that if one analysis the distribution of materials in different languages, the realization is that the materials that come from the two countries are distributed all over the world and many people access them. The other languages have not managed to distribute materials as widely as possible. This is because other languages are regional. Equally, even if they distribute the majority of the people may not be in a position to read them because they do not understand those languages. English is widely read and understood to an extent that any material in English can be read in any part of the world. [...]

[...] These increases the dominance of the English language and disadvantages other languages. Since language is culture, they are also forced by circumstances to learn the respective cultures. Because Britain and America enjoy relative democracy, peace, tranquility and stability, people tend to move there if their countries are not politically stable. For instance, when most some countries in the Middle East like Afghanistan and Iraq experienced political instability, many people moved to America and others to Britain because of insecurity. These people had to learn English in order to survive in these countries in employment and even education. [...]

[...] The critics of the English language dominance and growth predict that the trend may continue. They give an example of Latin which 1700 years ago, was the global language and it's no longer the case. However, when Latin was the global language, the world was not connected the way it is now. Currently, people are using the internet and phones to communicate, but during that time, the means of communication were not well developed therefore, it was not possible for people to share and spread the language. [...]

[...] English is a language of business. When business meetings are being conducted by business leaders either in Europe or Africa, the language of communication will be English and not their native languages. More than half of Western Europeans speak English in comparison to 28 percent who speak German percent French. Sixty nine percent of the business managers in Western Europe, and 65 percent of those in their late teens speak English. All these, show how global the English language is. [...]

[...] Native English speakers of the world Native speakers of English are approximately 430 million people in the world. However, the number of native and non-native speakers is approximated to be 2 billion people. English is the third largest language in terms of the number of speakers after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. In contrast, when the number of native and non –native speakers are put together, it is the language with the highest number of speakers in the whole world. However, according to David Crystal who is a linguist professor, it takes the second position when the Chinese languages are combined. [...]