How Many Millions? The Statistics of English Today
- 1 January 1985
- journal article
- special features
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in English Today
- Vol. 1 (1) , 7-9
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s026607840001302x
Abstract
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth – the first, that is, from 1558 to 1603 – the number of English speakers in the world is thought to have been between 5 and 7 million. At the beginning of the reign of the second Queen Elizabeth in 1952, the figure had increased almost fiftyfold. In 1962, Randolph Quirk estimated in The Use of English that 250 millions had English as a mother tongue, with a further 100 million using it as a second or foreign language.Keywords
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