| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> there’s only 380 million native English speakers Not how a lingua franca works. There are 1.5 to 2 billion English speakers [1]. By far the largest number of people to speak a single language. Most of them are in America [2]. (If you count English learners, No. 2 is China [3].) [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/articl... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236986651_The_stati... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ANewFormation 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CIA gives 18.8%, so about 1.5 billion. [1] But this number is dubious as it's largely from self response. Here [2] is a list by country. So 25% of Thais, 50% of Ukrainians, 50% of Poles, and so on "speak English." In the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true. But "my name is Bob" maketh not a common tongue. If we narrowed it down to the percent of people that could hold a basic conversation, the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | Retric 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Being fluent is a different question, you can dream in English without it being your native language. first language = A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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