English Today

WHERE IS ENGLISH SPOKEN TODAY? HOW MANY TYPES OF ENGLISH ARE THERE?

In general, we can speak about 7 types of English: British, American, Australian, Canadian, Indian, Philippine and Ugandan English. Almost two billion people on Earth speak English (more than 15% of the total world´s population), 5 % natively and the rest as the second language.

The English we speak today is made of Old English, Danish, Norse, French and changed by Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish and many more. (Borrowed words are from Latin 29 %, French 29 %, Germanic origin 26 %, Greek 6 %, other languages 6 %). Borrowed words make up to 80 % of English vocabulary.

English today is a donor of new words to other languages: internet, computer, cell phone, meeting, business … anD many names of drinks and food :)

English is the most spoken language in the world (if Chinese is divided into variants) and the third-most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.

As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English. English is the majority native language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, and is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch.

There is much variability among the many accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, idioms, grammar, and spelling, but it does not typically prevent understanding by speakers of other dialects and accents, although mutual unintelligibility can occur at extreme ends of the dialect continuum.

source - Wikipedia