English as a world language.1. English is one of the major

English as a world language.
1. English is one of the major languages in the world and geographically it is
the most widespread language on Earth, with 400 million speakers. In Shakespeares
time, for example, only a few million people spoke English, and the language was not
thought to be very important by the other nations of Europe, and was unknown to the
rest of the world.
2. English has become a world language because of its establishment as a mother
tongue outside England, in all the continents of the world. This exporting of English
began in the seventeenth century, with the first settlements in North America. Above all,
it is the great growth of population in the United States, assisted by massive immigration
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that has given the English language its present
standing in the world.
3. People who speak English fall into one of three groups: those who have
learned it as their native language; those who have learned it as a second language in
a society that is mainly bilingual; and those who are forced to use it for a practical
purpose, administrative, professional or educational.
4. English is the language of business, technology, спорт, and aviation. English
has the largest vocabulary with approximately 500,000 words and 300,000 technical
terms. One person in seven of the worlds entire population belongs to one of these
three groups. Incredibly enough, 75% of the worlds mail and 60% of the worlds
telephone calls are in English.
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