Where is English spoken? Countries, speakers and official status

English is spoken on every continent, but in very different ways: as the mother tongue of most people in some countries, as one official language among several in others, and as the foreign language almost everyone learns at school. The map below shows the first two; this guide explains them country by country, with the laws and numbers behind them.

Updated November 6, 2026 · 5 min read

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How many people speak English?

About 1.5 billion people speak English, over 390 million of them as their native language (Britannica). Roughly three out of four English speakers therefore learned it as another language — the reason English works as a common language between people who share no other. Why that matters for you is in Why learn English?.

Reading the map

On the map at the top of this page, dark blue marks places where English is the native language of most people; light blue marks places where English is an official language but not the language of the majority. Grey does not mean nobody speaks English there — only that English has neither role. In most of those countries it is the first choice of foreign language (Britannica).

Where English is the main language

Britannica names English as the dominant language of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, and of various island nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific (Britannica). “Dominant” does not always mean “official by law”: the legal position differs a great deal, as the next table shows.

Official — and usually shared

Britannica also lists English as an official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa. In most of these places English shares the role with other languages. Here is what the laws actually say:

English in international organisations

English is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, with Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. In the European Union it is one of 24 official languages; it became one in 1973, together with Danish, and it is still on the list today.

Where English is learned

Most of the world meets English at school. In the EU in 2024, 82.5% of primary pupils, 97.6% of lower-secondary pupils and 89.4% of upper-secondary pupils were learning it (Eurostat). All or nearly all primary pupils learned English in Cyprus, Malta, Austria, Spain and Poland, and every lower-secondary pupil in Denmark, Slovenia and Sweden. Two countries stand apart because they teach their own official languages first: Belgium (23% in primary school) and Luxembourg, where English is generally not taught in primary school at all.

English online

On the web, English is everywhere at once: in November 2026 it was the content language of 49.5% of the websites whose language W3Techs could identify — eight times more than Spanish (6.1%), the next language.

Which English should you learn?

There is no longer one standard of correct pronunciation, Britannica notes, but several standards around the world (Britannica). British and American English differ in some spellings, words and sounds, but they are one language, and with practice you will understand both. Pick the variety you hear most — at work, in your films, in the country you plan to move to — and stay consistent; A short history of English explains where the differences come from.

Keep learning

• Why learn English? 7 reasons, with the numbers
• A short history of English — with maps of Old English
• English grammar basics — the 10 rules that matter most
• English tenses explained — all 12 forms in one table
• Free English level test · Level tests in 36 languages
• For Turkish speakers: learn English with 16Word · For Arabic speakers: learn English with 16Word
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