theenglishlanguagetoday.docVIP

The English Language Today In the glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth (the first, that is, from 1558 to 1603), the number of English speakers in the world is thought to have been between five and seven million. At the beginning of the reign of the second Queen Elizabeth, in 1952, the figure had increased almost fiftyfold: 250 million, it was said, spoke English as a mother tongue, and a further 100 million or so had learned it as a foreign language. Sixty-two years on, the figures continue to creep up. The most recent estimates tell us that mother-tongue speakers are now over 300million. But this total is far exceeded by the numbers of people who use English as a foreign language - at least a further 400 million, according to the most conservative of estimates, and perhaps a further billion, according to radical ones. Creep, perhaps, is not quite the right word, when such statistics are introduced. What accounts for the scale of these increases? The size of the mother-tongue total is easy to explain. Its the Americans. The estimated population of the USA was just under 239 million in 1985, of whom about 215 million spoke English as a mother tongue; in 2001 it was 284 million, of whom about 240 million spoke English as a mother tongue. Today the estimated population is more than 296 million. (/servlet). The British, Irish, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and South Africans make up most of the others - but even combined they dont reach 120 million. Theres no doubt where the majority influence is. However, these figures are growing relatively slowly at present - at an average rate of about half a per cent per annum. This is not where the drama lies. A much more intriguing question is to ask what is happening to English in countries where people do not use it as a mother tongue. A highly complicated question, as it turns out. Finding out about the number of foreigners using English isnt easy, and that is why there is so much variation among the estimates.