Flags of (only some of!) the world’s English-speaking countries
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London
Name used by its speakers (Endonym): English
Native speakers (estimated): 380 million
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): 1.5 billion
Where it’s spoken: English is an official language in 59 sovereign countries; in the UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand it is the de facto national language, though not officially recognized. (2025 note: Recent efforts to make it sole official language of the United States will not be recognized by this website.)
Language family: Indo-European, Germanic branch (West Germanic).
Related languages include: Frisian (closest), Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages (including Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic).
This page remains under construction, but in the meantime… The best website we have yet found about the English language is thehistoryofenglish.com — If you want to know more, check them out!