English is now the most widely used language in the world. An estimated 760 million people use English worldwide — more speakers than any other language apart from Mandarin Chinese.
However, only 400 years ago it had only 7 million speakers and was mostly unknown outside the British Isles. It was used in most of England and south and east Scotland, but Welsh was still spoken through most of Wales, Cornish was still heard in Cornwall, and Gaelic was the language of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Western Islands and Highlands of Scotland.
Between the reign of Elizabeth I (1603) and Elizabeth II (1952), the number of English speakers increased fiftyfold to about 250 million. The speed of its expansion since the 1950s has been even more staggering.
Why has this happened? During the 17th and 18th centuries, English was the language of the leading colonial nation — Britain. Then in the 19th century it became the language of the leaders of the industrial revolution. By the 20th century, it was the language of the USA, the most dominant economic power in the world. And of course now it is the language of the Internet — or is it? Contrary to expectations, English has not totally dominated the World Wide Web. There are over 1000 languages on the Internet. In fact, it is estimated that by now less than 50% of the Internet is in English.
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