{"id":2727,"date":"2013-04-25T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=2727"},"modified":"2013-04-09T19:52:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T23:52:11","slug":"is-english-spoken-here-the-answer-may-surprise-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/is-english-spoken-here-the-answer-may-surprise-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Is English spoken here? (The answer may surprise you.)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>English is a very important language to know, no matter where you live. Though you already knew that because you are studying English! You may not know all the different places that English is spoken around the world though. Where is English spoken by the largest number of native speakers?\u00a0 What country has the highest percentage of native English speakers?\u00a0 You can find those answers and more below.<\/p>\n

First of all let\u2019s take a look at where English is spoken. You might want to look back at a previous post <\/a>I wrote about the anglosphere<\/a> that looks at where English is spoken around the world for more information on this.\u00a0 Below is a map (from Wikipedia) that shows the percentage of English speakers (not just native English speakers) by country.\u00a0 The dark green indicates 80-100% of people in that country speak English.\u00a0 The lightest green indicates 0-20% of people in that country speak English.\u00a0 There are varying shades of green in between dark and light that indicates 20-80% of people speak English in those countries.\u00a0 Looking at this map you will see a large proportion of people all over the world are speaking English, even if it isn\u2019t their native language (ESL speakers are included in these numbers).\u00a0 An interesting piece of information to note is that there is no widely agreed upon definition of the ESL speaker.\u00a0 A native speaker is easy to define: a person who has spoken the language in question from earliest childhood. An ESL speaker on the other hand can be anyone from the most basic beginner to an advanced ESL speaker.\u00a0 Also of interest when looking at this map is the fact that countries where there are a large number of English speakers, the English language may not necessarily be the official language of the country.\u00a0 For example, English is not the official language of the United States of America. It is the de facto or accepted language, but it has never been made the official language of the United States even though 95% of people living in America say they speak English “well” or “very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s get back to the questions I started with in the beginning of this post: Where is English spoken by the largest number of native speakers? The answer to that questions is not surprisingly the United States of America, where there is somewhere around 280,000,000 native speakers of English (among 319,000,000 inhabitants). India is the country that comes in second with the largest number of native English speakers, with somewhere around 100,000,000 native speakers. The countries with the largest percentage of native English speakers (in their whole population) are quite a bit smaller and usually are island nations.\u00a0 Each of these countries has over 95% native English speakers: Ireland, Jamaica, Barbados, and Bermuda! You can compare this to the United States where somewhere around 80% of people speak English as their native language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

English is a very important language to know, no matter where you live. Though you already knew that because you are studying English! You may not know all the different places that English is spoken around the world though. Where is English spoken by the largest number of native speakers?\u00a0 What country has the highest…<\/p>\n

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