The role of Euro-English as a new potential variety in the multilingual European institutions: a social and linguistic study

4 Chapter One English as a global language In everyday thinking English is regarded to be the world‘s most important language of our days, since it is supposed to be the main means of communication among people of different mother tongues in the world. However, in spite of its undeniable central role in international communication (at both the global and European level), the figures of its speakers show that English is not the major language of the world, nor even of the European Union. On the contrary, its leading role and its great significance is represented by the high number of non-native speakers in the world. As a matter of fact, according to Ethnologue statistics 1 , English is the third language of the world, ranking after Chinese and Spanish. In his The English Language 2 , Crystal estimates around 320-380 million native speakers, and 420 million second-language speakers and 750 million foreign-language speakers; the CIA World Factbook 3 counts around 340 million English native speakers all over the world. Gauging the number of the countries where English is considered official is a challenging task, because of the disagreement around the definition of some categories, such as official or co-official, national or state language. According to Crystal 4 , English holds a ―special place‖ in more than 75 territories: it is the official or joint official language of a country (as in the case of Ireland or Canada), or is the only dominant language, due to historical and political reasons (see the USA or the UK). Eventually there are countries where English, in spite of having lost its former official status, still plays a leading role in them (such as in Tanzania or Kenya). 1 Retrieved 27 Nov. 2010. <http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size> 2 David Crystal, 2003:109. 3 Retrieved 27 Nov. 2010. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/> 4 David Crystal, 2003:109.