Culture: English, the world’s second language

Culture: English, the world’s second language

Alone among world languages, English is more widely used as a second language than as a native language. If we define English Language Users as people who use the English language regularly (at least once a week or once a month), then there are more English

Language Users who would give a different language as their native language than there are people who would say they were native speakers of English.

Since 1750, the population of the world has grown rapidly from less than one billion to six billion in 1999. Projected population growth foresees a continuing rise to eight billion in 2027 and reaching about ten billion in 2250. After 2250, it is projected that population growth will stabilize at about ten billion.

Although there are an estimated 7,000 different languages spoken in the world, it is estimated that 50% of the world population speaks one of the top twelve languages as a native language.

English does NOT have the largest number of native speakers. In 1950, English was clearly in second place compared with Chinese. Currently, English is spoken as a native language by about as many people as speakers of Spanish and Hindu/Urdu but these numbers are all much smaller than the number of Chinese speakers. Because of differences in population age and population growth, English will very soon be overtaken by Spanish and Hindu/Urdu. By 2050, Arabic may well have replaced English as fourth most popular native language.