fudgebret
27th January 2012 |
hey Philippines must be in the top 3 because Filipino people can speak english well and can pronounce well ....they are very fluent...Philippines is the third largest country who speak english... |
Jessica
19th January 2012 |
What about Mexico |
Aru
10th November 2011 |
Where are the other countries? I'm looking for Venezuela!!! People do speak English there!! |
esperanza and dale
21st October 2011 |
Wheres the others ???
|
Tarek
19th October 2011 |
How come there are no European countries? |
Jason+Anselmo
19th September 2011 |
This survey was paid by the government of Singapore. That is what they always do with this kind of surveys and the reason they are always either on top or belong to the top 10. |
Marcelo
2nd September 2011 |
This statistics seems to be incorrect. I strongly disagree that the Philippines is on the 18th rank. |
Alex Go
23rd August 2011 |
101% incorrect.... Why is it that the PHILLIPINES is on the 18th rank? |
Nakata
15th August 2011 |
Where's Japan? |
Tanveer
10th July 2011 |
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lan_eng_pop_tot-language-english-speaking-population-total |
Tk
30th June 2011 |
Where is Nigeria? |
Imran
13th June 2011 |
Arsalan, its about number of speaker, not total population. |
abdullah
28th December 2010 |
pakistan ranks 9th in the world |
kinglloy
25th October 2010 |
i live in the middle east and i find that 10 out of 10 filipinos can speak english whilst 1 out of 20 indians can. |
Rita
21st October 2010 |
Does anyone know how recent this article is? |
Natkretep
23rd September 2010 |
@Ryan Caravana: The problem in Singapore is that a lot of the service staff (eg nurses, waiters, shop assistants) are foreign, particularly from China, and their English might not be up to the mark. In fact many Singaporeans of Chinese descent have been complaining about how these service staff cannot communicate in English with them. |
Peter
23rd September 2010 |
The problem with Singapore is that a lot of the service staff are not Singaporeans. Many of them are from China, so that even Singaporeans (who are ethnically Chinese) themselves have complained when these service staff cannot speak English. |
Sam
30th May 2010 |
Hello,
I don't think you are right here...!
How comes that country like Ghana where English is used as an official language could not have any speakers of English? What's the Ghanaian teachers' language of instruction; and in which language do they broadcast news?
Please you better re-consider the criteria you used to arrive at this concusion which has been widely criticised.
Thank you.
Sam
(chairmansak@yahoo.com) |
la+hija+Filipina..
15th April 2010 |
this is just too funny..haha..wrong survey i think, wonder how they ranked the countries hmmmmm..come on PHILIPPINES?! just on 18th..puh-lease...it's the best in asia, tell me who's better?! and yet didn't even get the second or third spot at least..ridiculous..:D..lulz.. |
la hija Filipina..
15th April 2010 |
hmm..as far as i know india is the largest english-speaking country in asia..but the Philippines is the best..no wonder why many foreigners choose it here to study their tertiary level..and Filipinos definitely speak as clearly as Americans,sometimes even better when you count the words' spelling, we're far better when it comes to 'correct' grammar..hehe, chill guys,we know what's the truth no need for complaining..as long as you guys and i understand one another..haha:)apparently, there's just few mistakes here..take care y'all!! |
what are 52 country's that speak english
15th March 2010 |
what are 52 country's that speak 100% english |
what are 52 country's that speak english
15th March 2010 |
what are 52 country's that speak 100% english |
what are 52 country's that speak english
15th March 2010 |
what are 52 country's that speak 100% english |
arslan
6th March 2010 |
This is quiet wrong ... Pakistan is in top 10 You can search on wikipedia ... |
singaporean
24th February 2010 |
Ryan Caravana,
since when did singapore require foreign nurses to learn mandarin? rediculous.
and a lot of people in singapore dont speak english simply because 40% of the population is made up of foreigner, many are from china, india, phillipines, malaysia etc and they dont speak english.
1 out of every 2 service staff in singapore is a foreigner.
native singaporeans do speak english. it ranges from pidgin english to standard enlish, depending on the langauge they speak at home but all of them do speak english. |
Anonymous
18th January 2010 |
@Ryan Caravana:
Really? I've lived in Singapore for several years and many of the natives do in fact speak a decent level of English -- unless of course you go to places such as Chinatown. |
Ashish Shrestha
1st January 2010 |
Where does China stand? |
Ryan+Caravana+(New+Zealand+and+Philippin
17th December 2009 |
I went to Singapore last year and Ive had a hard time communicating with some of the natives, all i get is either broken english or the phrase "sorry no englits" and they are requiring foreign nurses to study Mandarin in order to be given a job in Singapore? Foreign people are not required to be fluent in Filipino Language because english is the official language in the Philippines, and Singapore is way higher in rank than the Philippines in terms of English speaking? This survey is 100% incorrect, |
Ryan Caravana (New Zealand and Philippin
17th December 2009 |
I went to Singapore last year and Ive had a hard time communicating with some of the natives, all i get is either broken english or the phrase "sorry no englits" and they are requiring foreign nurses to study Mandarin in order to be given a job in Singapore? Foreign people are not required to be fluent in Filipino Language because english is the official language in the Philippines, and Singapore is way higher in rank than the Philippines in terms of English speaking? This survey is 100% incorrect, |
Aron Paul
10th June 2009 |
uhhhm..the population of the english speaker in philippine are almost 90M .,,and we grew up speaking and relating english word..even the squatters here in the phil know and can relate well eglish word. |
Kehinde Akiode
18th May 2009 |
Wow! I am REALLY surprised to note that Nigeria (where I'm from), Ghana, Kenya and Uganda are all listed as having 0 English speakers. The last time I checked, English is Nigeria's Official language. Surely that would mean at least some of us are English speakers! I mean, I wrote this post in English, didn't I? |
Jimmy Bacon
7th May 2009 |
Why isn't Jamaica on the English sparking list? |
Luis José (Ecuador)
4th December 2008 |
well to tell you the truth...the Philippines speak English Well but not very well...i mean according to the latest census...about half of the Pinons can speak English...while 75% can understand someone talking in English..i mean you have to understand why the Filipinos are not that much to a European language since it is in Asia a continent where NO European language can take over the people...i mean not even my language...Español...couldn't take over them...but you have to understand them...i know they tend to speak Tagalog a lot...but is that they're more confortable speaking it...i mean is like i fell more confortable speaking portuguese than english since portuguese is of the same family as my language and were like cousins...similar to that of Tagalog and any philippine language
but til today 50% can speak it Well while 75% can understand it
1.USA 290M
2.India 100M
3.UK 60M
4.Philippines 55M
wheter Taglish or Englog...the pinoys are proud of being bilingual and conserving their native toungues and no t putting it to extinct...i mean if you make English only the language of everything life...then their(filipinos)languages may decrease and possibly become extinct...is awkward to see an Asian person speaking ONLY english...is better for them to be bilingual and only bilingual...Tagalog first then English...y quien sabe tal vez Español |
Tommy (Austin)
19th November 2008 |
It was my understanding that the most english speaking people in the world reside in India. Could you confirm this? I'm not so much interested in this fact regarding the factor of english being a first or second language, rather a fact that reflects where the most English speakers in the world live. |
Eric (Southern California)
2nd October 2008 |
What!?! This info simply isn't correct, China has the largest number of English "using" persons. Aproximately 1/4 of their 1.3 Billion population have an understanding of this non-native language (hint, that's 300,000,000 people; that's more people then the entire population of the U.S.A.) This data must be only inclusive of "English as the native language". To note, this does not mean that China has the greatest number of English "speaking" persons, rather they have significantly less then the top English speaking countries. They should be in the top 10 at the very least. |
agido (Philippines)
11th September 2008 |
To the moderator: Ranking the Philippines below the top 3 of English-speaking countries in the world has made your post a lie. Ask those foreigners who came in to the Philippines and you will know. |
Edwin (Baguio City, Philippines)
6th September 2008 |
I don't really beleive on how did the Philippines didn't go on the top of the survey. I am too definite that the quality of the sample survey method along with the questions used to conduct the survey has been erroneously wrong. Philippines has about more than 80 million population where English is the MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION in School. All kids goes to school starts at the age of 7 years old. That simple explanation alone would prove that this survey is totally rediculous!... |
Jeffrey M. Petrie (Santiago de Chile)
10th August 2008 |
Please! The speculation posted about China or India having the largest number of English speakers comes from a 2006 article published online in the Asia Times. Read it at
The article states that about 177 million Chinese were learning English as of 2005. I am a mulilingual EFL teacher with experience in Spain, Saudi Arabia and Chile. It takes an average of 10 years of committed study to achieve proficiency in a second language, defined as the ability to understand normal conversation in a variety of accents and to be understood. Currently the number of English second language speakers is slightly higher than native speakers worldwide (British Council). Consequently it will be some years before Asian English speakers overtake native speakers, although it will eventually occur. I can say that in Spain and Saudi Arabia (a co-official English country) minimal English proficiency is at around 20% whereas in Chile it is only about 2%. |
Muriel (United States)
12th July 2008 |
Everyone who went to school in the Philippines is fluent in English. English is their business language. It is also what they use when talk formally to one another. The PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION IS WRITTEN IN ENGLISH. Hence, majority of the people speaks English, for more than the number written here at 32,000++. |
don (philippines)
8th July 2008 |
Filipinos are the best english speakers in the entire universe more than the Americans. Grammatically, we are the best... accent!! superb! Come on.. How come that out of 87000 million people in our country only 32,000 could speak english. Why not to visit Philippines,, You might be surprised.. Fire in the hole.. |
ariel (philippines)
11th December 2007 |
as far as i know in the Philippines we started to speak English either from infant or from preschool till aged.. i don't know why it is number 18? 32,802 only?there are lots of Filipinos speak English in fact, everybody...better check your data..
quote:
Ian Graham
Staff Editor
"There may be more English speakers than that in the Philippines, but they may not have identified their mother tongue as English in the census, which could explain why the number of English speakers given for the Philippines is so low."
your survey title would have been "English as Mother Tongue by country" |
AJ (Ireland)
23rd August 2007 |
The population of the republic of Ireland is over 4 million!! Apart from the >100,000 eastern europeans, many of whom speak good English, the rest are fluent!! Where did the 2.6m figure come from, the pop of Ireland has been that low in over 40 years! |
glen (us)
14th August 2007 |
Well, you can see the actual statistics here:
http://alt-usage-english.org/distribution_english_speakers.shtml
After USA and UK, it's Phillipines and India. |
pinoykid (Sorsogon, Philippines)
17th June 2007 |
It baffles me why they called it as largest english speaking-country when rating was based on speakers or the population on itself. Sure India is large enough than the Philippines and India have more than billion of population but not all can speak english, same in our country The Philippines but.. almost all of our population can speak, write and understand english very well than India.. Let us refer to the fact on call-centers, call-center business is now booming in our country even those call-center from India were transferring to The Philippines and this is a hard fact. Furthermore, if you scrutinize the data.. you can see that Singapore is on higher slot than The Philippines, even if Singapore is a tiny country with population of only 4,483,900 of December 2006 estimate against The Philippines with population of 88,706,3002 of December 2007 estimate. I will not agree in any way that all Singaporeans can speak english. So I think there is a bug on this program, lol!
I think I've got to research about the author of this data. |
Pinoykid (Sorsogon)
17th June 2007 |
I agree with you Marjon, but it buffles me why they called it as largest english speaking-country when rating was based on speakers or the population on itself. Sure India is large enough than the Philippines and India have more than billion of population but not all can speak english same in our country The Philippines but.. almost all of our population can speak, write and understand english very well than India.. Let us refer to the fact on call-centers, call-center business is now booming in our country even those call-center from India were transferring to The Philippines and this is a hard fact. Furthermore, if you scrutinize the data.. you can see that Singapore is on higher slot than The Philippines, even if Singapore is a tiny country with population of only 4,483,900 of December 2006 estimate against The Philippines with population of 88,706,3002 of December 2007 estimate. I will not agree in any way that all Singaporeans can speak english. So I think there is a bug on this program, lol!
I think I've got to research about the author of this data. |
Rey (Philippines)
21st May 2007 |
This study is totally absurd! How can you say that only 32,000+ Filipinos can speak English. Ever since we were born, we already know English. Heck, from Kindergarten until College/University Education, the medium of instruction is English (except of course for the subject Filipino). Even the road signs and shop signs are in English. The government speaks to us in English, most of TV shows and TV ads are in English. It's not an understatement to say that there are more Filipinos who know more to write and speak English than they do in Tagalog. This study is fallacious, it's totally a failure. You could ask a 3-year old in English here in the country and you'd be surprised that kid knows how to pronounce the words properly. |
Lex Uy (Philippines)
3rd April 2007 |
The problem with this statistic is that I don't think it takes into account that the Philippines has two First Languages which are Filipino and English. Apparently everything in the Philippines is in both Filipino and English...so most Filipinos should be fluent in both.
One more thing, I'm currently studying in Singapore and most people do speak good English here and it is one of the country's main languages. There is however a large percentage of the population (the elderly) that only speaks the different native languages or dialects. |
Rise Pray (United States)
2nd April 2007 |
32K plus out of 80million plus filipinos??!? For chrissake, go to the Philippines for you to know the truth.As far as I know,like some of the guys here is that my country, Philippines, is the THIRD LARGEST ENGLISH SPEAKING country. |
speedyg (NY)
23rd March 2007 |
only 32,802 filipinos can speak english? how did they arrive at this EXACT number? unbelievable... well, never believe everything you read, esp. on the internet. |
Chantal (the Netherlands)
2nd March 2007 |
These statistics are clearly, clearly about NATIVE speakers only. Many people have suggested it should include second language speakers, but that's very hard to assess. When do you say that you speak a language?? When you can greet someone, when you can ask for directions, when you can have a discussion or when you can write a Ph.D. thesis in it? Because of the lack of consensus on when you properly speak a (second) language, it's obviously better to leave it out. If you look closely, you see that many other countries are missing here too. In Europe, I'm missing my own Holland, but also Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc. Nobody will claim that people there don't speak any English, I would be a counterexample myself, but it's not their native tongue. Statistics on second language speakers are always only estimates, not as reliable as census data. |
Marjon ((Philippines))
31st January 2007 |
This data is totally absurd! How come only 32thou out of 87 millions Filipino they claim can speak English. If these researchers where to go to our country they will be fascinated that even a kindergarten child in our country can comprehend English. Maybe their data where dated before the age of man. |
Venkat (Bloomington,IL)
19th January 2007 |
As per Census 2006, the number of english speaking population in India is over 350 Million |
Dan (Washington DC)
30th October 2006 |
Canada is accurate, even discounting people who speak English as a second language. Canada 17 million people is barely half of Canada's population. Canada's Quebecois, Inuit, and various Asian minorities are sizable but they are not _that_ big. Again, this is even discounting people who speak English as a second language (which seems to be how they are measuring English speakers in general on this chart, which is silly). |
Cesar Fabunan (Quezon City)
18th October 2006 |
I'm not sure the figures here are accurate at all. The Philippines has 32,802 english-speakers? Thats less than the population of the UP Diliman, and we all took english exams to get in. And the African nations who got zero, thats simply impossible for the reason that their Ambassadors alone here in the Philippines speak English. |
Ayeah Bruno (China)
9th September 2006 |
What about Cameroon? We are bilingual and English is our Language. Many too in China are bilingual. Complete your job and receive the praises you duely deserve. |
George (Canada)
3rd August 2006 |
It's hard to believe some countries don't have any people with English as a 1st language. |
XcLusiveGTtriLLa (Jersey City, NJ)
19th July 2006 |
There are many other english speaking nations missing here, there are 751,000 english speakers in Guyana and 1,205,000 english speakers in Trinidad and Tobago. |
Amit (Germay)
11th July 2006 |
India currently has more english speakers than the U.S and the U.K combined!!! |
ROHIT RAWAT (BHAARAT(INDIA))
2nd June 2006 |
INDIANS MUST THINK WHY THE MOST DEVELOPED NATIONS LIKE FRANCE,GERMANY,JAPAN,SPAIN etc. ARE NOT IN THE LIST OF ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES.EVEN CHINA IS NOT THERE.THIS IS THE REASON WHY INDIA IS A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY,AND IT WILL REMAIN UNTILL WE ARE ON THIS LIST. |
Roberto Cervantes
10th April 2006 |
In regards with India being an English speaking country, I think people living in the United States "suffer" it every day when we have to call AMEX, or Citibank, and our calls are answered in India. It's is very frustrating and sometimes they are impossible to understand. Even though many of them speak an outstanding English, they obviously speak English as a second language, and some of them don't actually speak English, although they think they do. Should they all be counted as English speakers? |
Roberto Cervantes
10th April 2006 |
American citizens residing in Mexico.
There are a million of American citizens living in Mexico, which is the country with the largest American community residing abroad. Mexico should be accounted for a million English speakers at least. There are many sources but this is one of them: http://www.aca.ch/amabroad.pdf |
Paul
1st April 2006 |
With reference to comments by previous correspondants, if the origin of the data is from National censuses the 2.6m english speakers attributed to Ireland would appear to reflect the position in the 1961 census, when the population of the country was 2,818,381 (see http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/vol1_t1_4.pdf). The 2002 census gave the population as 3.9m (2006 projection: 4.2m)at least 3.7m of which (allowing for foreign nationals and irish speakers) are native english speakers.
If deduction is made for Irish speakers confusion may arise between the number of persons who have the ability to speak Irish (2002: 1.02m) and those who speak it daily (2002:320k) http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/vol11_entire.pdf.
Even so, with about 3.9 english speakers, I would not expect Ireland in the top 20 english speaking countries by population. |
Per Ulv
24th February 2006 |
This is the number of people who have english as their FIRST LANGUAGE. Of course people almost all over the educated world understands and is able to speak english more or less. |
analyst
17th January 2006 |
Also over-looked are the English-speaking African nations. Combined these exceed India and other nations. Singly they make up a substantial part of the top 10.
My experience with India and others is they do have English speakers but even in the educated ranks these often are second language speakers, meaning trouble communicating. |
leslie filipino
7th December 2005 |
i dont believe that philippines wasnt among the top 5.the schools medium of instruction is english and for forty years philippines was colonized by the US .i am a witness that millions here know how to speak fluent english |
E Tan
30th November 2005 |
This data seems inaccurate/incomplete - e.g. there is no information on the number of English speakers in Malaysia, which one estimate has at about 10% of the population or about 2.5 million |
Lindsay
16th November 2005 |
I was thrilled to find this site--until I saw the estimated number of English speakers in India as "0". ??? |
Sankar
13th November 2005 |
Please check the number of English speakers in India. I am positive that south India alone has more English speakers compared to UK, Australia, new zealand etc. |
Vadiraja
5th November 2005 |
How come the table shows 0 for India, which is one among highest English speaking nations... |
kix
17th October 2005 |
Philippines should definitely be in the top 5, at least. |
Desteni
10th October 2005 |
I keep seeing the comments referring that China or India or the Philippines had high ratings with the largest number or English-speaking citizens. Am I confused or would America not be on this list seeing that it is the national language and the most often spoken next to Spanish, spoken fluently by only 17.9% of the population? |
CJ Riley
23rd August 2005 |
Perhaps your editing team needs to reflect that numbers represented on the website are derived from census. In India's case, the data was collected in 1961. I can almost guarantee (since we do active business with India) that there more English speakers than the first two combined.
- CJ, New York |
Cathy Archibald
27th July 2005 |
What language is spoken most throughout the world? |
Pedro
10th July 2005 |
As far as I know Philippines is the third largest English speaking country (http://wikitravel.org/en/Philippines#Talk). I might be wrong but I'm sure that 32,802 is far less than the actual English speakers in the country. |
Chris
10th April 2005 |
I was expecting to find the Philippines somewhere on top of this list. In several books that I have read, the Philippines has the second-largest English speaking population in the world. Also, I'm guessing that it's statistically impossible that only 35,000+ out of 87 million Filipinos (less than 1%) could speak English when it is used as the medium of instruction in the Philippines. |
Emmanuel Chukwu
10th February 2005 |
What is the current population of English speakers in the world? Including Native, Non-native and foreign speakers |
shashikant.s.k
27th January 2005 |
Respected Sir,
Thank you for your cooperation.
But actually I wanted to view the latest Indian Writers in English.Hope I'll get the same.
Thank you |
CJ Vasani
19th January 2005 |
once again....statistics that are too old or misguiding. India's English 'speaking' population is at least 200+ million. |
lukem
5th December 2004 |
The simple answer would be it was the language of the British Empire, then as it receded, it remained a Lingua Franca. Now American cultural and economic dominance would be ensuring its continued importance. |
kin
2nd December 2004 |
can anyone tell me hw english became so popular? |
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