According to latest estimates there are now 1.6 billion people who can speak English either as their first or second language (more than double the number of just ten years ago). By comparison, Mandarin is at around a billion. There are now more people who can speak English in China than there are in the U.S and more in India than in U.S. and U.K. combined.
I believe the numbers, in my travels to over 30 countries this year, English has been everywhere. Only a few countries (Japan, Korea, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Colombia and Chile) offered simultaneous translation of my speeches and nowhere were more than a third of the audience using it. In Thailand 400 people came and no translation was offered. Twenty years ago on my first visit I was accompanied by a translator to every meeting.
It is estimated that more than 2 billion people are learning English worldwide meaning that in ten years time it is likely that more than half the world's population will struggling to comprehend why "i" comes before "e" except after "c'" (except of course for words like foreign, species, seize, weird - oh never mind).
We Brits may have lost our empire but our language rules!
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