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del.icio.us| COMMENTARY |
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Natseva 31st March 2012 |
These stats are obviously based only upon first language or native speaker classifications, which would not include the nearly one billion people who have learned English as their second language, which includes at least 50% of the people of India, Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, the EU, plus about 20 million Spanish speaking natives in the United States, too. There are also millions of University graduates all over East Asia, in Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan even Vietnam and certainly in China who speak and write fluently in English. Many of these "Second language" speakers of English are in fact more adept in using English than many "Native Speakers" who are not very well educated. My information is based on my own teaching and living experience in various countries of Asia. |
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esperanza and dale 21st October 2011 |
Wheres the others ??? |
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Tarek 19th October 2011 |
How come there are no European countries? |
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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. |
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Marcelo 2nd September 2011 |
This statistics seems to be incorrect. I strongly disagree that the Philippines is on the 18th rank. |
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Alex Go 23rd August 2011 |
101% incorrect.... Why is it that the PHILLIPINES is on the 18th rank? |
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Nakata 15th August 2011 |
Where's Japan? |
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Tk 30th June 2011 |
Where is Nigeria? |
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Imran 13th June 2011 |
Arsalan, its about number of speaker, not total population. |
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Yogendra Joshi 20th February 2011 |
The Official Language of Nigeria (population about 150 Million) is English, and Wikipedia claims that more than 50% people (more than 70 Million?) there speak/can speak English. However, mapsofworld.com states that despite being the official language a majority of people cannot speak it. |
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Rita 21st October 2010 |
Does anyone know how recent this article is? |
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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. |
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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. |
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what are 52 country's that speak english 15th March 2010 |
what are 52 country's that speak 100% english |
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what are 52 country's that speak english 15th March 2010 |
what are 52 country's that speak 100% english |
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arslan 6th March 2010 |
This is quiet wrong ... Pakistan is in top 10 You can search on wikipedia ... |
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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. |
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Ashish Shrestha 1st January 2010 |
Where does China stand? |
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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, |
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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, |
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Jimmy Bacon 7th May 2009 |
Why isn't Jamaica on the English sparking list? |
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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 |
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blouis@clemson.edu 21st November 2005 |
Why is the number of English speakers in India left out of your statistics? I would like to know the current number please. |
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Ian Graham Staff Editor 11th April 2005 |
If you combine the number of mother tongue speakers (32,802) and second-language speakers of English (52 percent of the population) given here for the Philippines, you get a total of about 44 million English speakers in the country, more than all but the top two countries on this list. There may be more English speakers than that in the Philippines, but they may not have identified theie mother tongue as English in the census, which could explain why the number of English speakers given for the Philippines is so low. |
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Suchita Vemuri Staff Editor 4th March 2005 |
Hi Leslie -- you're right! The problem, however, lies partly with the census in India, which has changing formats and currently does not allow reporting for more than two languages! Since India has more than 300 spoken languages and most people would report one of these as the "mother tongue" (or the first language, even if it is not commonly spoken at home), and then report the national language, Hindi, as the second language, however comfortable they may be with English, it will not be reported in the census figures. In the 1981 census of India, 0.3% of the population said English was their first language. English daily newspapers in India have a irculation of more than 3 million, with an average 5 million readers to every copy, and all schools in urban centers and many in rural areas teach English. |
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kin 2nd December 2004 |
can anyone tell me hw english became so popular? |
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