English as a world language. 1. English is one of the major languages in the world and geographically it is the most widespread language on Earth, with 400 million speakers. In Shakespeare’s time, for example, only a few millio...

English as a world language. 1. English is one of the major languages in the world and geographically it is the most widespread language on Earth, with 400 million speakers. In Shakespeare’s time, for example, only a few million people spoke English, and the language was not thought to be very important by the other nations of Europe, and was unknown to the rest of the world. 2. English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in North America. Above all, it is the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has given the English language its present standing in the world. 3. People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have learned it as their native language; those who have learned it as a second language in a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical purpose, administrative, professional or educational. 4. English is the language of business, technology, sport, and aviation. English has the largest vocabulary with approximately 500,000 words and 300,000 technical terms. One person in seven of the world’s entire population belongs to one of these three groups. Incredibly enough, 75% of the world’s mail and 60% of the world’s telephone calls are in English.