Have you ever wondered how many people there are who speak English? It's quite a number! Geographically, English is the most widespread language on earth, and it is second only to Chinese in the number of people who speak it. It is spoken in the British Isles, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and much of Canada and South Africa. That"s about 400 million people. English is also a second language of another 300 million people living in more than 60 countries. If you add to this the enormous number of people who learn to understand and speak English (like yourself), you will realise that English is indeed a "world language". In Shakespeare's time only a few mil­lion people spoke English. All of them lived in what is now Great Britain. Through the centuries, as a result of vari­ous historical events, English spread throughout the world. Five hundred years ago they didn't speak English in North America: the American Indians had their own languages. So did the Eskimos in Canada, the aborigines in Australia, and the Maoris in New Zealand. The English arrived and set up their colonies ... Today, English is represented in every continent and in the three main oceans — the Atlantic, the Indian and the Pacific. English is mixing with and marrying other languages around the world. It is probably the most insatiable borrower. Words newly coined or in vogue in one language are very often added to English as well. There are words from 120 lan­guages in its vocabulary, including Arabic, French, German, Greek, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.