Countries Speak English

Over 2 billion people speak English, making English the largest language by number of speakers, circular reference and the third largest language by number of native speakers. With 300 million native speakers, the United States of America is the largest English-speaking country. As pictured in the pie graph below, most native speakers of English are Americans.

Additionally, there are 60 million native speakers in the United Kingdom, 29 million in Canada, 25.1 million in Australia, 4.7 million in the Republic of Ireland, and 4.9 million in New Zealand.

In the European Union, English is one of 24 official languages and is widely used by institutions, and by a majority of the population as the native language in the United Kingdom and Ireland and as a second language in other member states.

Estimates that include second-language speakers vary greatly, from 470 million to more than 2 billion. calculates that, as of 2003, non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. When combining native and non-native speakers, English is the most widely spoken language worldwide.

Besides the major varieties of English, such as American English, British English, Canadian English, Australian English, Irish English, New Zealand English and their sub-varieties, countries such as South Africa, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from English-based creole languages to Standard English. Other countries such as Ghana and Uganda also use English as their primary official languages.

As of 2012, India claims to have the world's second-largest English-speaking population. The most reliable estimate is around 10% of its population (125 million people), second only to the U.S., and is expected to quadruple in the following decade.

Source - Wikipedia