Never before in history has a single language been as widely used as English. The number of English users in Asia alone is more or less equal to the number of Native English speakers worldwide: 350 million, more or less the combined populations of the United States, Britain and Canada.
The advent of the Internet has boosted English even further, about eighty percent of the world’s electronically stored information is in English, and this widespread use of the language has caused an increase in the demand for English courses. An estimate by the British Council reports that today more than 1 billion people are learning English for work, study or leisure. China is strongly pushing English language in its schools, there are more Chinese children studying English as second language than there are Britons.
Those among the native English speakers who believe their language will soon be the standard for worldwide communication should think again:
Firstly, it can hardly be considered
their
language anymore, since the vast majority of English users are not native speakers. English is a living language and like all languages it evolves, it changes and adapts itself according to its environment and – especially – the cultural and historical background of its speakers, often mingling with idioms and linguistic structires of the local language.
english pronunciation audio