Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-nxk7g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-12T11:11:21.085Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Two thousand million?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2008

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Updates on the statistics of English. Starting with excerpt from David Crystal, How many millions use English? (ET1, 1985). The author says: Reading this article again, that almost a quarter of a century on, the most noticeable change, it seems to me, has been in the amount and colour of the author's hair! That aside, I am struck by my final comment: ‘I shall stay with this figure for a while’ – a billion. It appears I stayed with it for a decade. In the first edition of my English as a Global Language (1997: 61) I raised my estimate, suggesting a middle-of-the-road figure of 1,350 million. In the second edition (2003: 69), a ‘cautious temperament’, I said, would suggest 1,500 million. And these days, having read the more sophisticated assessments by David Graddol and others, I am prepared to revise upwards again in the direction of 2 billion. In short, we have moved in 25 years from a fifth to a quarter to a third of the world's population being speakers of English.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008