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While New Zealand is majority English-speaking, its two official languages are Māori [111] and New Zealand Sign Language. [112] The United Kingdom does not have an official language. In Wales and Northern Ireland, English is co-official alongside Welsh [113] and Irish [114] respectively. Neither Scotland nor England have an official language.
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties , and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.
The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, [1] [2] making it the largest language by number of speakers, the third largest language by number of native speakers and the most widespread language geographically.
As of 2024, there are 57 sovereign states and 28 non-sovereign entities where English is an official language. Many administrative divisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level. Most states where English is an official language are former territories of the British Empire.
The European Union is a supranational union composed of 27 member states. The total English-speaking population of the European Union and the United Kingdom combined (2012) is 256,876,220 [69] (out of a total population of 500,000,000, [70] i.e. 51%) including 65,478,252 native speakers and 191,397,968 non-native speakers, and would be ranked 2nd if it were included.
The United States does not have an official language at the federal level, but the most commonly used language is English (specifically, American English), which is the de facto national language. In addition, 32 U.S. states out of 50 and all five U.S. territories have declared English as an official language.
In other parts of Europe, English is spoken mainly by those who have learnt it as a second language, but also, to a lesser extent, natively by some expatriates from some countries in the English-speaking world. The English language is the de facto official language of England, the sole official language of Gibraltar and of Akrotiri and Dhekelia ...
Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, German, French, Italian, and English. Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, [4] and English has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language. (See English language in Europe.)