English today

English today.

The modern world is becoming smaller all the time. Every day distances between different countries seem shorter and international relations grow stronger. For this reason it’s getting more and more important to communicate. In order to do that people learn foreign languages, especially English.

One billion people speak English today. That’s about 20% of the world’s population.

400 million people speak English as their first language. For the other 600 million people it’s either a second language or a foreign language.

English is the first language in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It is spoken in Canada, the Irish Republic, the Republic of South Africa.

As a second language English is spoken in more than 60 countries. It is used by the government and business people. It is the language of politics and diplomacy, science and education, trade and technology, sport and pop music.

80% of all information in the world’s computers is in English. 75% of the world’s letters and faxes are in English. 60% of all international telephone calls are made in English. More than 60% of all scientific journals are written in English.

To know English today is absolutely necessary for every educated person, for every qualified specialist. Learning a language is not easy. It is a long and slow process that takes a lot of time and patience, but it’s a must.

English is taught throughout the world and a lot of people speak it quite well. In our country English is very popular: it is studied at schools, colleges and universities.

To my mind, everyone will speak English one day. We all need to understand each other. To do that we need an international language, and that’s English.