Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec,sci.lang
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
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Subject: Re: English as the European language (not) (Re: Languages in the EC)
References: <3ha0n3INNmq5@SUNED.ZOO.CS.YALE.EDU> <HINSENK.95Feb13151018@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA> <792815519snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> <donhD44Ev2.Dsz@netcom.com>
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In article <donhD44Ev2.Dsz@netcom.com> donh@netcom.com "Don HARLOW" writes:
> If the figure you quoted had been 1400 million, I would have attributed 
> it to Crystal's _Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language_.
> 
> Interestingly, this figure (which is often quoted as the number of 
> speakers of English in the world) is actually the total population of 
> all countries that use English as an official language, plus the USA. 
> Approximately half of that 1400 million is in India, where by no stretch 
> of the imagination can more than a small percentage of the population 
> (the highest figure I've seen is 10%) be said to speak English at all. 

I have no idea what the actual number of English-speakers is. Does anyone
have any figures, broken down by country, preferably with an explanation
of what criteria they used to determine whta level of ability in English
was included? Do such figures exist?

My own back-of-envelope calculation:

native speakers    350 M
non-native speakers, 10% of 5500M = 550 M
total = 900 M

-- 
Phil Hunt...philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
Majority rule for Britain!
