840 million people speak English
Around 840 million people speak English around the world, according to Ethnologue. (335 million people speak it as a first language, and 505 million speak it as a second language.) That’s a lot of people, but where do they all live? Read on to find out which countries have the most English speakers and the highest English proficiency.
United States: 268M
No surprise here: Those arrogant former colonists may not speak the Queen’s English correctly, but they do have the world’ s largest English-speaking country. Approximately 225 million Americans speak English as a first language, while 43 million speak it as a second language.
India: 125M
India is next on the list, with 125 million English speakers. But only 226, 449 of those speak it as a first language. For the rest, it’s a second language.
However, as BBC reporter Zareer Masani noted in a 2012 article, the patchwork state of English education means that many Indians speak “not so much English as Hinglish, or what my parents’ generation called Babu English – the language of clerks.”
Pakistan: 94M
Surprised? English is one of Pakistan’s official languages, along with Urdu. Although virtually nobody in Pakistan speaks English as a first language, around 49% of the population do speak it as a second language.
The Philippines: 90M
The Philippines has two official languages: Filipino and English. Only around 37,000 Filipinos speak it as a first language. However, a little over 92% of the population can speak it as a second language.
Nigeria: 79M-100M
English is the official language of Nigeria, with somewhere between 79M and 100M speakers.
A growing economy with a vibrant literary and entertainment scene
Nigeria is also home to world-renowned authors who write in English. You may have heard of Chinua Achebe, the Man Booker-prize winning author of Things Fall Apart who died in 2013, or Nigerian poet and Nobel Prize-winning playwright Wole Soyinka. But there’s also Chris Abani, who was imprisoned twice as a teenager after publishing books the government at the time considered suspect. And there’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novelist, feminist writer, and short story author. Meanwhile, Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma’s novel The Fishermen won several awards and is being translated into 15 languages.
Nigeria is also the largest economy in Africa, and it’s expected to have the highest GDP growth in the world between now and 2050. Meanwhile, the Nigerian film industry is the third-most-valuable in the world.
As an aside, ever wonder why so many well-known email scams originally came from Nigeria, as opposed to another country? There are a lot of reasons, but the relatively high percentage of English speakers is probably one of them. Around 53% of the population in Nigeria can speak English, which means that a small percentage of those people (by no means representative of all Nigerians) can use their English skills to claim royal descent and a big fat inheritance. With a hefty pay-out for you, dear blessed one, if only you’ll kindly wire them the transfer fee.
Internet fraud isn’t limited to Nigeria
Most Nigerians despise scammers and deplore the damage they’ve done to the country’s reputation. However, every country has a few bad apples, and in Nigeria, some of those bad apples used their English skills to become famous for a specific type of email scam called “advance fee fraud.” Other countries have their own specialities, and when it comes to Internet fraud as a whole, most of it actually comes from countries other than Nigeria, and continents other than Africa. For example, Russians are known for hacking restaurants and stealing customer’s data, and Estonia is a hotbed of clickbait fraud.
Also, these days, that “Nigerian Prince” offering to share his wealth via email could just as easily be an old white guy from Louisiana.
The United Kingdom: 59.6M
It’s about time, right? 98% of people in the UK speak English. But the UK’s comparatively small size and small population mean that larger countries like Nigeria and the Philippines actually have more English speakers.
Countries With the Highest English Proficiency
Obviously, numbers don’t tell the whole story here. Which countries have the highest English proficiency – the highest percentage of people who can speak English well? To answer this question, let’s take a look at results from EF’s English Proficiency Index (EPI). EF is a company that administers English exams to companies. (Not coincidentally, they also promote the idea that English should be the world’s “common language” for business. And there are some questions about what constitutes “good” English- one criticism of the EF is that they promote US/Canadian/UK varieties of English while stigmatizing the natural evolution of the English language in other countries.)
Excluding English-speaking countries like the US and the UK, here are the 5 countries where professionals are most proficient in English, according to EF:
The Netherlands: 15M English Speakers
90 percent of people in the Netherlands speak English, and their EPI score is 73.8, which is the highest of any country they tested.
Denmark: 4.8M English Speakers
The Nordic countries are known for their English skills. See the next three countries on this list? Denmark has a slight edge over the other three, with an EPI score of 72. 91% of the population speaks English as a second language.
Sweden: 8.2M English Speakers
90% of Swedes speak English as a second language. The country has an EPI score of 71.7.
Norway: 4.5M English Speakers
90% of Norwegians speak English as a second language. Their EPI score is 71.3.
Finland: 3.8M English Speakers
70% of Finns speak English as a second language, with an EPI score amongst professionals of 69.2.
The Philippines: 90M English Speakers
The only country to rank in the top 5 for both numbers of English speakers and English proficiency, the Philippines has an EPI score of 67.4.
What This Means for Translation
So, if you’re trying to do business in one of these countries, will you still need to invest in translation? Probably so. Translation is still important. Remember, India may have 125M English speakers, but that’s only 12% of their population. Of course, the amount of translation help you’ll need depends on factors like the nature of your business and the target audience for a given piece of content.
As EF noted in the Harvard Business Review,
“Not a single country surveyed has workforce English proficiency that qualifies as “advanced” — level C1 or C2 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.”
And that’s among professionals, who are more likely to be educated and have access to English classes.
Plus, even when people can speak English as a second language, that doesn’t mean that’s the best way to communicate with them. 75% of people prefer to buy things in their native language, even when they can speak English. And of course, when it comes to translating product packaging and other communications with customers, consumer protection regulations often require accurate translation.
Need help with translation for your business? We provide an entire range of document translation services.
WTF what about the republic of ireland thats not in the UK? More importantly where in the hell is Canada.
Hi Andrew, The Republic of Ireland has a population of less than 5 million people. Canada has 35 million. So neither of them make the top list, which is based on numbers.
The list of countries with the highest English proficiency excludes English-speaking countries like the US, the UK, Canada and the Republic of Ireland.
And Where is Australia?! Eih
As above John, the population of Australia is not enough to make the top positions of the list
I think Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere near New Zealand. Hope that helps.
Don’t forget Australia my dear 🙂
I think Canada lies north of the US of America
Well then how come the us and the uk are in it, if it excludes those countries?
Hi Finn, the first list is the most English speakers by numbers. So Australia is not on the list simply because it only has a population of 24M.
The second list ranks countries where English isn’t the dominant language by their English proficiency, or the percentage of the population that can speak it well.
I hope that clarifies things for you!
Many Canadians speak French
I think Canada lies north of the US of America
Lol where is Sri Lanka at? Our entire nation speaks English and it’s a official language here and we have 20 million people?
Hi Peveen, The first list in the article is based on sheer numbers. The second list is based on English proficiency, and for that I used the EPI (English Proficiency Index) score from EF. Sri Lanka actually scored fairly low. You can read more here: http://www.ef.edu/epi/regions/asia/sri-lanka/
Is English the main language because of Sri Lanka Civil War?
Madam as an Indian student I know very well in English according to that which I had to choose in Europe
My country is small yet it is in here… DUTERTE SPEAKS ENGLISH!!!
Apart US and Canada, Nigeria are the best and most proficient in English language.
I feel like England might take exception to that. 🙂
I am very happy to see india at second in the list
It is because of the population
Most of us Indians speak English as 2nd language since we have our own languages to be concerned about
What about South Africa? It’s been spoken there for hundreds of years. Everyone speaks and needs to speak it. Probably over 50m
hi, Andrew just saying Canada is above the USA!
It’s not because of they are good english speakers or how long they speak in english it’s because of the population of the country let’s just say USA is the smallest country if that country is so small that you think it will be the most english speaker?
You’re right. North of the US of A, hahaha
INDIA ?? will be a first position in English speaking countries after 10to20 years
we are the second in the world . its a great news for us
I think in Canada & Australia also most people speaks English very well.
It’s *****??
Isnt English supposed to be one of the hardest language’s to learn? With all the nouns, pronouns, verbs, subject’s and predicates ECT. Coupled with the fact we have several words for example, close and clothes which sound exaclty the same but have different spelling and totally different meanings. Then factor in the the tricky singular version of a word such as box, and the plural version of boxes and all the puncuation that means as much as the words themselves. Learning the words of a language is not enough alone to be considered a “second language” if you dont know the meaning of the words you are trying use you wont make much sence to the people who speak that language fluently.
Well you yourself cannot spell so many words right. And if your comment is pointing towards Indians then you should know that we speak English better than them who have English as their first language and we use proper and correct grammar. Our pronounciation might be wrong sometimes but we speak English clearer than people with English as their first language.
Pronunciation…by the way…cant believe you guys are arguing about English…and some words will differ in spelling due to the changes in American English vrs that of English in the U.K.
ohj…i am happy to see india at 2nd of d list” but around india thr is 29 states ,and deffrent languages still indians are communicating fluent english with good pronunciation.
As an Indian, I can say most of the Indian use English as their second or third maybe fourth language. As we have many languages to communicate with. So basically most of us aren’t perfect in English. And I can tell these are only numbers who just speak English. Not based on how fluently.
Does anyone know where did they get these exact figures from? I wonder if they took me in their count or not.
I am pleased that Nigeria is part of the list. I am very displeased with way the description the writer of the article gave about Nigeria. Nigeria isn’t not the only corrupt country in the world, even the so called countries that paint themselves to be saints are worse in the history map in terms of crimes and fraud. You don’t describe a country or a nation by using crude and diminishing words to get your point across. Some of the so called internet scam and fraud are been done by other people using the name of the country Nigeria to perpetuate their evil agenda, and then people like you the writer of the article will quickly jump into conclusion without proper investigation. You should be ashamed of yourself for using such discriminatory description you gave or use in analyzing the country Nigeria.
Hi James, Thanks so much for your feedback! I certainly don’t think your country is especially corrupt or criminal, and I would like to apologize that what I wrote came across that way. I’ve updated the section on Nigeria to make that more clear.
English in the Philippines is being thought since Pre-School (5years old) until college alongside Filipino Language. So most likely all kids who go to school either private or public know how to speak english but since none of them speaks english outside of school and its a little awkward to speak english with friends. So we use ’em when we speak with foreigner instead.
Brod, it’s ‘taught.’
Gosh, Australians dont speak English.
Its a messed up version of it…
This is the most foolish blog I’ve ever read. You don’t make a conclusion of this out of the numbers of the population. You need to consider the proportion, correct enunciation, efficiency and fluency of the population if you are going to make a conclusion about this. I do not think India should be in the second place. I don’t even know that they are already speaking in English, they still seem to sound Indian. Next time you should consider those things. And I do believe you are Indian, that’s why you want to uplift your race through this. If you depend on population at all times , then, like for example, Vatican City would be the poorest country in the world; if Vaticanos sum up their all their income then it would be the least because there only has 801 people living their.
Moreover, before you consider yourself as English speakers make sure every person understands your English. BOom!
Dude speaking English doesn’t uplift your race so kindly shut the fuck up.
Why is Ghana not there, Sweden, Holland and Denmark have less speakers compared to Ghana’s 30 million population. The whole of Ghana speaks English.
Hi Nicholas,
The first list is of the countries with the most English speakers. The second list is of non-English-speaking countries that have the highest English proficiency – the highest percentage of people who can speak English well, according to English testing firm EF.
How about English as a first language listing? Would the US speakers outnumber the Brenglish ones from all the colonies like NZ, Oz, SA, IE, IN, etc?
The Philippines is a former colony of USA in 1940’s it has almost a total of 100 million English speakers as of today if you include 9 million Filipinos who work in overseas Millions of foreigners including Koreans,Chinese,Japanese,Arabs etc.were going to Philippines just learn english language with proficiency.
Some of the responses on here are hilarious! The number of times Alison had to repeat:
1st list is countries with the most English speakers. 2nd list is of non-English-speaking countries that have the highest English proficiency
Can people be this stupid?
YES
“Those arrogant former colonists may not speak the Queen’s English correctly…” Ummm…thanks?
Hi Amanda, it’s just a joke! No offence meant.
I can see that many non-native speakers are commenting here, with lot of grammatical errors. Though, those are not very serious ones, we can avoid such mistakes by checking the spelling and grammar, using the Microsoft word or any other tool, before posting the contents to a public online forum.
It’s very nice to have command over a language and it helps preserve the beauty of that language.
Sentence correction book used for GMAT exam by Manhattan GMAT is a great book, which helped me in improving my English skills.
The USA is not the world’ s largest English-speaking country. I have travelled extensively in America, and most of the time I didn’t understand a word they said.
Hi, I’m from the Philippines and I am very interested in this article. I would like to ask where did the numbers for the first part came from. I tried looking it up but nothing is coming up.
Hi Torres, Which numbers, in particular, are you questioning?
I think this writer is absolutely sick in the head! I am a Nigerian and a hard worker, I speak and write English language better than those who claim to be English and owners of the language alongside my own mother tongue which I am proud of, but being described in this very way by this writer shows how lame you are and how wrong whatever you wrote here clearly is, how come you didn’t write about Nigerian doctors, Nurses, Engineers, artistes etc all over the world doing very well? No! you will not you only came here to pen down your insecurities. Shame!
Hi Miriam, Of course most people from Nigeria are hard workers and good people! The point was made more than once in the post that the email scams came from a few bad apples. There’s some of those in every country. Also, we did make a point to cite your country’s rich literary and entertainment scene. We’re sorry to have caused you any offence, and we wish you the all best!
Hi Richard, point of correction here, I got into this beautiful website through Google aiming to read about numbers of countries that speaks English not about a particular country that do fraud, lengthy article you wrote about this country called Nigeria is a bit to far and biased, pls stick to your point so that your audience will remain. Bad media publicity must have done you wrong here, according to the world fraud statistics Nigeria is not even closer to the point of mentioning, the way you pictured the country is really bad, I really pity the citizens of the country. I love this website but this not good.
Hi David,
No need to feel sorry for Nigerians, they have a lovely country with a rich artistic, literary and film scene. The reason the bit about Nigeria was so long was that we wanted to make sure to showcase those positives instead of letting an entire country be defined by a few bad apples.
Hello, I saw that statement about the 75% who prefer to purchase products in their native language. Could you please share the source? It is amazingly interesting.
Hi Michael, that was from Common Sense Advisory Research: https://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/04/prweb11725995.htm
South Africa – Population of almost 55 million and half at least speak it as a first language. Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi have all been left out of the mix.
Please I want to know more English in my head I didn’t go to school when I was young.
Was that insert of SCAMMING necessary?
An informative piece. Thank you. However, the criteria of the EF’s EPI is vague, lopsided, un-sociolinguistics and deliberately designed to promote native-speakerism: One must speak English like an American, Briton, Canadian, English South Africans, or like a European. If one does not, then one is not proficient in English. That is questionable. All language varieties are the proud products of their environments and cultures. Variety, linguists say, is the spice of language. It is not my ambition to speak through the nose and eat up words in the mouth and throat as Europeans do to English. People speak naturally and so there are bound to be differences in language varieties. Imposing the features of variety A on variety B is questionable, sometimes done to an objectionable level.
And look at the way you biasedly introduced Nigeria, claiming that many fraudsters come from there because they use English. What do you call this kind of warped thinking? Why did you not introduce the UK and the US as imperialist countriesn using English to retard our progress and make lose our identity? Nigeria with over 70 million speakers of English does not have up to four million who are proficient in English? How and when was this manipulated test conducted?
Anyway, I do not blame you. If Africans were wise people, l mean our leaders, they will leave your English for you. And let me predict, this global hegemony that English enjoys will soon collapse. It cannot last forever. Mark this.
Thank you for this comment on the EPI- that’s a good point that I’m going back to incorporate in the article. As for the list that ranks countries by proficiency, that’s based on the EPI, and it’s based on a percentage of each given country’s population, not raw numbers.
And no, we certainly don’t think that Nigeria has a higher percentage of bad actors than any other country. People are a mixed bag no matter where you go, and the Internet presented bad actors around the world with new opportunities. In the days before Google Translate, bad actors who spoke English were better poised to take advantage of people through email than those who didn’t have those language capabilities (and who found other ways to use technology).
And we are 100% in favor of all languages flourishing, not just English.
I think you could have put Nigeria on the list without talking about the part of the scam. We are an amazing people and sure there are bad eggs among us but that doesn’t mean other countries don’t have or don’t scam. Nigerians are really doing well and there are honest people among us so please don’t classify us with the scam part.
Hi Oluwatosin, Yes, as we pointed out in the article- every country has a few bad eggs and most internet fraud isn’t from Nigeria at all.
What a wrong stereotype!!!
Nigerians aren’t bad people
Pls be mindful of the word u used to addressed Nigerians
Of course they’re not! This article explicitly states that.
Please let’s this right. English is not a level of intelligence. It’s just a language like every other language so countries shouldn’t be rated according to how well English is spoken.
It’s definitely not a level of intelligence! That should go without saying.
English was introduced to the philippines by the americans for easy colonization & control.we use to speak& write in spanish before the americans came. But now english is useful for the filipinos.the philippines is a big exporter of labor abroad : doctors nurses med tech caregivers engineers domestic helpers because of their english communication skills.english learning is compulsory here from kindergarten to college.and we are fond of watching american movies which also help in mastering the language.our civil service board exam eligibility is required for those who would serve in the goverment.majority percentage points is in english grammar vocabulary reading comprehension.
English was first taught in the philippines by american teachers who arrived by a vessel named thomas.
Where is Uganda? People here speak good English even more than the owners, (the British)
Where is Uganda? People here speak good English even more than the owners, (the British)
This article was terribly researched! So many missing English speaking countries. Terrible!
Hi Mel, Which countries did you feel were missing? And from which list?
27 million people live in Australia, approx 24 million speak English
It’s July 2021 and I just saw your post. Now I bet you added Nigeria because it’s a country mostly bombarded for issues with regards to Fraud. But I was hoping to see Ghana in your list since it isn’t exactly far from Nigeria. I do hope you revise your list because your data right here can be debunked on any day. I am from Ghana, and I acknowledge the country’s population isn’t that high, but surely your data can be said to be flawed if it failed to recognize the country as one with the highest populace of English speakers in West Africa. We can sit to deliberate on this on any day at all, but i just need you to acknowledge your data is flawed since the accuracy level is wrong to begin with.
Hello Adobea, thank you for your input! In this blog post we focused on top 5 English speaking countries by population. Ghana did not make the list as it has 18m English speakers, where’s Nigeria has 178m. Wiki has a great page about this where they list all the countries with English speaking population – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
Nigeria should be on the second spot, it has over two hundred million population and English is the major language spoken by everyone and the major language taught in schools.
Hi Kenneth- It should be at number 3, underneath India. We’re updating the blog post with more up-to-date info for all countries. Thank you for letting us know!
You did not mention why people use Emglish yet it is one one the most difficult language to get the message across in. It’s in the history, Modern English was a very simple language, this is what most of the world speaks, but to really get the message a cross it requies a huge amout of extra bits, which is why there are so many words to do that. However we as English speakers in th UK do not care how well the message is spoken, as long as we get it. We are not prescious about our language like the latin laguages, anything goes really. That is why it’s the world most popluar language.
That is a very good point, thank you for your input!
Woah Now, I know there are 125 Million English speakers in India
And it’s second in rank, But I feel very bad because they are giving more importance to English more than their Mother-Tongues.
Being fluent in English is a good skill especially if you are from a non-English-speaking countries. But “comprehension” is another thing and it will make a lot of difference in your communication skills.
What I mean is, dude, read the article first before you say anything. And TRY to understand it. STOP looking for your country on the list if you have a small population. This article is about the countries with the highest number of English speakers.
However, I think the most interesting fact here is the list of countries with the highest English proficiency.
What countries can someone visit that has the highest value
For people saying why India is at the 2nd place, FYI, English is an official language in India and spoken frequently and fluently by many, specially in the cosmopolitan cities. Since India has more than 200 Languages, Yes at times it becomes 2nd or 3rd language preference for many. But my no means all Indians speak Clerk English. Check your data and source.
Even in Africa we have uganda we speak English From kindergarten
Yes it was extremely surprising to know that Pakistan was number three on the list. It is my third language.