World Language Map

Where is English spoken?

English is an Indo-European language, spoken in the United States, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and 142 more. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where English is spoken

English is spoken in 146 countries: the United States, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and 142 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
United States96%328,284,480
India19%267,734,700
Pakistan50%126,182,000
Nigeria53%125,475,910
Philippines64%75,697,280
United Kingdom98%67,089,918
Germany64%53,836,224
Ethiopia43%50,976,500
Tanzania69%46,548,849
Egypt35%38,936,450
Canada87%33,751,476
Sudan61%30,785,053
Bangladesh18%30,365,460
France39%26,666,094
Australia96%25,697,856
Italy34%20,728,066
Thailand27%18,878,670
South Africa31%18,737,206
Brazil8%17,604,160
Mexico13%16,996,200
Netherlands90%15,995,160
Iraq35%14,729,190
Turkey17%14,300,315
Malawi63%13,710,879
Poland33%12,786,279
Cameroon38%11,767,118
Spain24%11,347,296
Kenya19%11,066,816
Sweden86%9,107,228
Israel85%7,992,227
Ghana21%7,263,711
Malaysia21%7,258,608
Zimbabwe42%7,203,168
Belgium59%7,066,784
Austria73%6,546,625
Romania31%5,625,942
Singapore93%5,606,468
Greece51%5,335,161
Madagascar18%5,301,486
Morocco14%5,234,264
Denmark86%5,136,900
Ireland98%5,128,791
New Zealand98%5,057,986
Jordan45%5,028,300
Papua New Guinea50%5,023,100
United Arab Emirates50%5,016,100
Liberia83%4,512,918
Switzerland45%3,987,256
Finland70%3,938,487
Eritrea59%3,742,936
Hong Kong51%3,721,888
South Sudan27%3,429,999
Zambia16%3,327,856
Algeria7%3,291,575
Argentina7%3,289,608
Sierra Leone35%3,192,368
Kazakhstan15%3,039,000
Czechia27%2,926,233
Yemen9%2,892,636
Jamaica98%2,767,236
Portugal27%2,755,944
Sri Lanka10%2,198,260
Lebanon40%2,145,792
Rwanda15%2,043,495
Croatia49%2,033,559
Botswana81%1,985,043
Hungary20%1,971,150
Uganda3.9%1,922,037
Chile9.5%1,773,146
Bosnia and Herzegovina45%1,709,402
Bulgaria25%1,695,665
Puerto Rico49%1,479,530
Slovakia26%1,446,549
Trinidad and Tobago88%1,239,894
Slovenia59%1,237,755
Gambia40%1,009,332
Lithuania38%998,712
Cyprus73%963,987
Mauritius72%943,560
Nepal3%933,672
Eswatini80%910,472
Fiji94%894,514
Latvia46%828,575
Guyana100%794,099
Solomon Islands100%726,799
Panama14%625,834
Lesotho27%601,438
Estonia50%596,895
Guatemala3.1%565,911
Malta88%413,362
Bahamas100%410,862
Luxembourg56%375,902
Belize77%320,158
Barbados100%304,139
Maldives75%291,644
Vanuatu83%263,946
Namibia7%196,256
Guam91%154,274
Saint Lucia90%151,234
Macau23%148,218
Kiribati100%116,545
Grenada96%110,036
Jersey95%98,218
Bhutan11%97,300
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines96%96,621
Isle of Man100%92,269
Antigua and Barbuda86%88,265
United States Virgin Islands75%78,283
Marshall Islands93%76,270
Dominica94%70,181
Guernsey100%67,787
Bermuda92%66,976
Cayman Islands98%65,320
Turks and Caicos Islands98%59,230
Micronesia57%56,774
Saint Kitts and Nevis98%54,030
Northern Mariana Islands97%49,584
American Samoa97%42,578
Honduras0.4%41,928
British Virgin Islands98%39,300
Seychelles38%37,311
Sint Maarten68%31,426
Tonga28%29,369
Gibraltar80%23,746
Anguilla95%18,445
Nauru95%9,397
Brunei1.6%7,870
Cook Islands100%7,761
Saint Helena68%5,401
Samoa2.1%4,386
British Indian Ocean Territory100%3,500
Montserrat64%3,500
Aruba2.4%3,002
Falkland Islands77%2,820
Palau8.6%1,880
Norfolk Island96%1,678
Niue56%1,120
Tuvalu9.1%1,068
United States Minor Outlying Islands100%316
Saint Pierre and Miquelon3.7%190
Pitcairn Islands92%46
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands100%20
CubaNot givenNot given
Dominican RepublicNot givenNot given
SurinameNot givenNot given
VenezuelaNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, English is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks English.

How many people speak English?

Wikidata gives about 379 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). It also lists about 753.4 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where English sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies English as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Germanic
  4. Northwest Germanic
  5. West Germanic
  6. North Sea Germanic
  7. Anglo-Frisian
  8. Anglic
  9. Later Anglic
  10. Middle-Modern English
  11. Macro-English
  12. English

Related languages

Other languages in the Macro-English group:

More about English

Codes: ISO 639-3 eng, Glottolog stan1293. Glottolog macroarea: Africa;Eurasia;South America.

Questions about English

Where is English spoken?

English is spoken in the United States, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and 142 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 96% of the population of United States, which is about 328,284,480 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak English?

Wikidata gives about 379 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled. It also lists about 753.4 million second-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019).

Which language family is English in?

Glottolog places English in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, Anglic, Later Anglic, Middle-Modern English and Macro-English.

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