Talk:List of countries by English-speaking population/Archive 1

message: The original data on this page was quite poor, overall. I checked the reference page from which it came and found that references were commonly from 20 years ago and in some cases over 40 years ago (India which some apparently think has more than 300 million speakers and was recorded there as having 10 million). I would not take this page too seriously at the moment getting it in shape will take some work.
None of the figures for the Caribbean countries are correct. Hairouna 05:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Data Overall Poor

message: Where is Hong Kong? Answer: China. Should it be separately listed? --Van helsing 07:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not taking any position here on whether it should be separately listed, but we do mention the number of speakers in Hong Kong in China's source note. The uncertainty around the China figure is so large that Hong Kong makes no real difference. -- Avenue 01:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hongkong

message: If the added comment: 
25-30% of the population speak English as a second language for work or education purposes. English is actually understood by around 50% of the population.
to India is true, then it will have a great impact on the currently stated number (11,021,610) of English speaking people in India. 300 million (25% of 1,192,225,812) would be more likely. At the moment the number and comment are contradicting, any reliable source for either of them? --Van helsing 13:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That comment is long gone from the article. Our current figures are based on the 1991 Census. -- Avenue 01:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: India

message: There can't be NO first language English Speakers in India, if they've counted to the nearest ten people. Even if it's only a couple of hundred hippies that never found their way home and thier offspring.A Geek Tragedy 19:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This has been addressed, using 1991 Census figures. -- Avenue 01:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: India

message: Since passing College English Test is required for a bachelor's degree, I don't think China has such a tiny English speaking population.--Skyfiler 20:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're not alone. In a speech in Beijing last year, Gordon Brown said that "It is estimated that over 300 million Chinese people currently speak English."  Can anyone track down a better source for this estimate?  -- Avenue 12:30, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a more dated estimate of 200-300 million users to the list for now. -- Avenue 12:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a Chinese, I don't think there are so many English speakers in China. There are maybe 200-300 million of English users (read/write) or learners. But I bet only a tiny fraction of them can "speak" fluent English. Sinolonghai 22:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  English speaking in China 

message: I know this is a bit dated (1996), but it's interesting to compare the figures in Table 1 in this article with those in our list. Most of them are much higher than what we have. -- Avenue 12:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternative figures 

message: I doubt there are only 683 English-speakers in the Cook Islands. Until 2003, it was the country's only official language, and there's a population of about 18,000. Where did the figure of 683 come from? Aridd 13:36, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Like many of the figures here, it comes from Ethnologue. They got the Cook Islands figure from a 1966 UN report, so the figure is very out of date (again, like many of the figures here). English is widely spoken in the Cooks, especially on Rarotonga, so the true figure would be much higher. -- Avenue 15:34, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've used Crystal's figures, which total 4,000 English speakers. This still seems surprisingly low to me, but I'm no expert. -- Avenue 12:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cook Islands 

message: I hope this is supposed to be citizens who speak English as their native tongue, because if not, the data is completely useless. Joffeloff 21:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Many people speak English, better than you and I do, yet English is not their "native tongue". I am sad to say, but your reasoning is flawed. --Ezeu 03:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you mean? I meant that if this list is supposed to portray all people that speak english, both second language and native tongue, it's factually crippled. What did you think I meant? That native speakers of English are 'superior' to locals? That's not what I meant. I was discussing this Wikipedia article, not the subject matter it itself is discussing. Joffeloff 12:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure from your comment how you think the article should be improved. Do we need to make it clearer that non-native speakers are included? Or are you suggesting that we need to warn people about the quality of the data on second language speakers? -- Avenue 12:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm saying that the list should clarify what sort of English speakers it is discussing. Joffeloff 13:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have expanded the introduction to explain this more fully, and added a caution about the quality of second language data as well. -- Avenue 04:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I hope 

message: Is there some academic reason for choosing this term?  A Canadian Francophone who speaks English isn't speaking it as a foreign language.  It's a second language, sure, but not foreign.  WilyD 12:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. And some people object to second language because it easily be someone's third or fourth. Is "non-native" too clumsy? -- Avenue 15:02, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I see that.  I hear ESL classes are now oft refered to as English as an Additional Language classes - I'll see what else I can dig up. WilyD 15:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  As a '''Foreign''' language 

message: it is quite misleading. school children may actually believe some of the nonsense on it.
:Thanks for your insight - please feel to nominate it for deletion if you want. WilyD 02:27, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page should be removed  

message: According to this article less than 80% of Australians speak English. That has to be incorrect. 62.31.55.223 13:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like someone needs to find data for second language english speakers in Australia.  In general, the most problematic ones are the ones without sources - i.e. Britain is woefully out of date, but at least it's labelled as such.  Some are the best available - i.e. Canada, where the short census is Gender + What language do you speak. WilyD 13:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've dug up the 2001 Census figures, and added them to the article. -- Avenue 14:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Australia

message: What should we do about countries where an English creole is spoken? I understand there can be a huge range of speech patterns within a country, from people who would not be intelligible to most native English speakers through to people who can speak with hardly an accent. So counting who speaks "English" could be very subjective. I'm tempted to use figures that include all English creole speakers (where available) but discuss this issue above the table, and have a note on each row it affects. (This is the approach taken by Crystal 2005 - see our article for the reference.) -- Avenue 12:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  English creoles 

message: According to the 1995 Britannica Encyclopedia, there are more English speakers in the Philippines than in India. Even though the data seem to be old, it would be impossible that Indian english-speakers would balloon into the figure shown at present. The same idea also goes for China. Isn't it that China is virtually an English illiterate nation? I also doubt that only 20.000 Filipinos use English as a primary language. If that figure was for Spanish, it would have been more believable.--Fifteencounts 12:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about telling us what the Britannica figures are? If you have another source for the number of native speakers of English in the Philippines, we could use that instead of Crystal's figure. I agree that the figures for both India and China are problematic. We should probably give a range of estimates for both. -- Avenue 10:29, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Filipinos, apart perhaps from those 20,000 stated, do not speak nor understand English as a primary language. If that were the case, one wouldn't have to be forced to speak slower, use simpler words, and use only the five Tagalog vowel sounds in one's speech when conversing with even educated Filipinos. Not to say that it is wrong not to be well-versed in English (just look at Europe or Japan), only that this dear country of ours should stop priding itself over delusions that it is an English-speaking country in the truest sense--and the 3rd-largest in the world, at that. 210.213.184.10 04:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree with your statements that Filipinos do not speak nor understand English as a primary language. don't speak, yes maybe, but don't understand?--well, Filipinos are bombarded by English words and phrases even before birth. By the time they reach kindergarten, Filipinos are drilled on the American pronunciation of English words...and this anglicization continues to adulthood. Refer to Philippine English. Also the figure in the list needs to be updated, the present population of the country is more than 85 million.
Hey, I found the Britannica Statistics. I'm quoting figures from the 1995 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1994 Encyclopedia, Comparative National Statistics section, pages 778-782. India's English speaking population stands at 30,310,000. For the Philippines, it stands at 36,000,000, just behind United States' 224,900,000 and UK's 56,830,000. Anyway, can anyone clarify the difference between English speakers and English users? Isn't it that this table is for speakers and not for mere users?--Fifteencounts 02:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

text: The table is about people who know how to speak English. It does not refer to people who speak English always.--23prootie 23:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Philippines 

message: Can someone explain what this means?  Specifically, how English is a national language of India, but not Canada, for example? WilyD 18:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good question. The national and official language columns were added without any explanation by 212.102.225.147 (aka Van helsing?) back in March, when they switched to Ethnologue figures. I'd be happy to drop them, since the official language information is duplicated at List of countries where English is an official language and they seem a bit tangential. -- Avenue 10:51, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Our national language article states that English is a national language of Canada. Perhaps the national language column really means "National language but not an official language", since there seems to be no overlap between the two columns. -- Avenue 11:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, this is why I'm unclear.  English and French are both official languages of Canada, stuck into the constitution with glue or something.  It's also a national language in the sense that most Canadians speak english (and the majority as their first language).  If both were *'d I would've guessed national meant Widely spoken and official meant somehow government sanctioned - but trying to reconcile India (where english is an official language, not spoken by the majority and listed as a national language) and Canada (where english is an official language, spoken by the majority and listed as an official language) has thus far proved impossible for me.  The national language article specifically says nations, not countries for that so that doesn't help much either. WilyD 13:19, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  National Language 

message: To make the table less controversial, how about removing the first and second language sections. I mean, is there a way in which we could precisely determine these figures?23prootie 06:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Typically, it's exactly word for word from the census.  Which means it's "as reliable" as whether they speak english at all. WilyD 13:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: First language/Second language

message: Are there really that many speakers? Does those figure correspond to the population of Hong Kong?--Jondel 06:42, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless this was a study based on who can say "Hello" in English, China does not come remotely close to that number.  It should be ranked near bottom.  Hong Kong should be a separate entry with a near 40% rate even at a high level.  Benjwong 05:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: China

message: English is Liberia's official language (and they have their own dialect, Liberian English), yet this table states that just under 70,000 people in Liberia speak English when it is a country with over 3.2 million people; thus, something is definitely wrong here.  This table is clearly wrong in regards to Liberia's stats.  --172.131.131.220 11:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Liberia? 

message: *The number of English speakers in Nigeria is in the tens of millions, not only one million.
*At least one quarter of Israel can speak English well.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.112.134.90 (talk • contribs) 
:We could add that info when we have a source; do you have one? --Van helsing 09:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nigeria & Israel 

message: The list shows only a few thousand English speakers but its the offical language and "virtually everyone speaks English"  as referenced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_and_Tobago
--bartj 19:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trinadad and Tobago 

message: India and United states does not have English as national language. India has English as an official language as apparent from here. US doesn't even recognize English as an official language at federal level. English is just the de facto official language of US as evident here. Gnanapiti 19:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If that is the case, I suggest removing "National language" column from this article. Placing English in the "national language" column changes the whole meaning of status of a language. Constituition of India doesn't recognize any language as "national language", which can be seen here. English is just the de facto official language in US and by no means a national language, as here.Gnanapiti 21:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would have no problem with removal of the National Language column, or even both columns.  They're unsourced, unclear and as far as I can tell unuseful. WilyD 21:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree completely. Let's get rid of both columns. We already link to List of countries where English is an official language in the See also section, so the information in that column is just a click away if any readers want it. -- Avenue 23:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The two columns are a leftover of the original source used for this article: ethnologue.com, note the ”Language use” entry for each country: National or Official. We could use ethnologue as source if we would want to keep the columns, or remove the columns (with which I would not have a problem at all). --Van helsing 08:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Whatever happened to this discussion? National language and Official language columns carry no meanings at all and look strange in an otherwise decent article.Gnanapiti 04:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well… I would say that the discussion goes in the direction of a consensus (build in 3 days) to remove the columns, pretty quick actually for wiki standards :) --Van helsing 12:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Official and National languages in India and US

message: According to this list all of Argentina's English speakers have English as their first language, which results in Argentina becoming one of the countries with the most native English speakers.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrianKovo (talk • contribs) 23:06, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Argentina discrepancy 

message: Excuse me if it is a dumb question. But the table here lists "Total Number of English Speakers", and the next two columns are "As First Language", and "As an Additional Language". Now, shouldn't the sum of these last two columns be equal to the third last column, which is the "Total Number of English Speakers"?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.147.191.23 (talk) 03:15, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discrepancy? 

message: Almost all Japanese students learn English in middle school and high school.  There must be at least one person there that speaks it as a second language.  They should be added to the first chart.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.55.54.36 (talk) 17:04, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where is Japan? 

message: Japan is mentioned above.  South Korea, Eritrea, and Ethiopia are also missing.  English is the most widely spoken foreign language in Ethiopia.  How many other languages/countries are missing? 伟思礼 (talk) 01:27, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Angola 伟思礼 (talk) 00:57, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Countries missing 

message: Okay mates, we've been studying a lot about India, here is a Gov Institution link where you can check the ACTUAL (estimative) number of English speakers in India:
http://www.languageinindia.com/may2003/annika.html
*Read it entirely. You'll find it is around 4%.
After researching a bit more and comparing several numbers, as well applying some formulas, we came up with the number 4,18%
So, it is the best we can do after 2 weeks studying about it.
If the CIA numbers are right (what DOUBT a lot) the India population is 1,173,108,018 (July 2010 est.)
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html
By the way, the Brazilian numbers are wrong by 10 millions there!!!
*The final number of English speakers in India may be of 49.035.915.
Note:
In fact, nowadays there may be up to 4,67% of English speakers in India.
As we need secure numbers for our project, we are making decisions based on 4,18%.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.59.157.14 (talk) 21:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Here are some Numbers for India:

message: The Lebanese numbers are obviously wrong. The American University of Beirut's teaching language is English and has around 7000 students. This number is already twice as high as the number that is shown in this page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.18.21 (talk) 05:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lebanon? 

message: There are very large english speaking populations in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, they are not on this list what happened?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.104.65 (talk) 22:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where are the middle east countries? 

message: Wouldn't it be better if it were sorted by percent rather than total number of people?
*I agree, but I also think that density of english-speaking population would also be useful.  The question as to whether the density or the percentage is better was posed on the bottom of this talk page.  I think that both should be implemented even if a new article must be created to do so.—User:r1ngu  —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  By Percent? 

message: I agree, the percentage would be useful. We could also add a column giving 'Total Population' (percentage can then easily be calculated)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.95.167.91 (talk) 05:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total population? 

message: DSuser and I have drafted a complete analysis of why it would be a good or a bad idea to include the EU in lists of countries in some form (either directly in the list or as a special note outside the list). We'd kindly invite all editors who are interested in the EU and/or lists of countries to take a look at Talk:European Union/inclusion in lists of countries, read all of the arguments presented and then state their opinion on what a sensible compromise might look like. Thanks! —Nightstallion 09:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  EU in lists 

message: I just became aware of this page, after someone tried to include the unlikely statistic about India having the largest number of English speakers on the planet to the India page itself and immediately got pounced upon.  I have no idea how the "sources" mentioned in the India ranking managed to generate their numbers, but one thing I am sure of is that they are not only unreliable, but grossly inaccurate.  Here is the quote from one of the sources, David Crystal, author of Stories of English, a popular book about the English language.  Crystal is writing (here) in the British newspaper, The Guardian:  
*I fail to see how this would be possible ow this would be possible.  Since most English speakers in India have learned the language and not picked it up, even if 100% of Indian children and teenagers were going to school in the 1990s (and we know that was hardly the case) and all were learning English, it wouldn't account for a jump from 5% of the population in the 80s to 33% in the 90s.  
*In reality the statistic is even more startling: according to the 2001 Census of India, only 64.8% of the population was literate in any language.  This means that in excess of 50% of the literate population was able to use English.  
*While we are on the subject of numbers from the last Census of India (2001), some other numbers don't jibe with Crystal or India Today's numbers: The 2001 Census reports that a full 31.6% of the workers in India are cultivators, and another 26.5% are agricultural laborers, another 4.2% household industry workers, and finally the remaining 37.2%, "other workers."  Since the cultivators and agricultural laborers live in rural India (which is not the bastion of English speakers) and account for 60% of the population, is it being suggested that the remaining 37.2 "other workers" and their families all speak English?  Given that the "other workers" include, for example, the vast number of merchants and laborers of small-town India, which unlike their counterparts in big cities, don't speak English in great numbers, it is even more surprising. 
*Besides David Crystal is loose with his other statistics.  If the population of India were increasing at the rate of 3% per annum, we would be seeing major famines.  The population of India never touched the 3% per year mark during the entire 20th century.  Here are the statistics of the rate of population growth for the 20th century from the Census of India official website.  (The rates are decadal, so you (more or less) have to divide by 10 to get the yearly rate of growth).  As you can see, around the time Crystal was writing his book, the rate was more like 2%.  That may not seem like much of a difference, but when there are a billion people, a difference of 1% is 10 million per year.  If Crystal is so off-base for his population rate numbers, why should we believe his English speakers numbers? 
*The only source that seems half-way reliable, is the Siemens report, which gave the numbers to be 64.6 million (English as a second language speakers) and 25.4 million (English as a third language speakers).
The bottom line for me is that the current state of this page is unacceptable.  The page needs to be split into two pages: List of countries by population of speakers of English as a first language and b) List of countries by population of speakers of English as a second and third language.  Such a division would give maximum information.  (If people insist on having one page, then the statistics of India and other ESL countries, need to be revised.)  I won't revert anything yet, but I want to hear from the people who have put this page together.  In the meantime I will look up the academic sources on the subject. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:32, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah this page can get very ridiculous. I remember it saying that Pakistan had 52% before like wtf who is making these changes PreserveOurHistory (talk) 09:30, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: India's Exaggerated (Tripled) Numbers

message: The area of information sourcing, verifiability, and reliability is a difficult problem and that problem really comes to a head in list articles like this. I don't want to challenge this just now at e.g. WT:V, but I think that this article attempts to sidestep the WP:V guideline that, "Articles and posts on Wikipedia or other open wikis should never be used as third-party sources." Two possible reactions to this are "never say never" and/or WP:IAR. IMHO, in this particular case neither of those reactions is unreasonable. Still.....
Without belaboring things, let me point to one example of a problem. The current version of this article puts the U.S. population at 251,388,301 in a table column footnoted The population figures are based on List of countries by population. The wikipedia article mentioned in the footnote currently puts the U.S. population at 302,495,015. How many other figures are out of sync? I dunno. Are there any serious disconnects between the two articles? I dunno.
One possible improvement might be to adopt a scheduled synchronization policy and add "as of {last sync date}" to the footnote pointing to the source. That's easy, but doesn't feel right to me. An enhancement to this possible improvement might be to remove the tables which rely on List of countries by population to templates, and to have a bot update the templates. The tables in the templates could each have a bot-updated footnote saying something like: "The information in this table was extracted from List of countries by population as of {date & time}. See that article for the latest figures and for citations of supporting sources."
Note:  see related discussion here.  Perhaps these discussions should be consolidated on WT:V.
Comments? -- Boracay Bill 02:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the idea of a bot updated footnote.  Haven't read the discussion on WT:V and WP:V.  Will do so when I can find some time.  Thanks for initiating this discussion.  Regards,  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:08, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Information sourcing, verifiability, reliability 

message: I've reverted this change. If I have it wrong, re-revert and please explain how I've got it wrong.
I'm not an expert in the subject matter here, but I've been following recent discussions about source reliability at WT:V.  One wonders how the supporting source reliability stacks up in support of the assertion that India has 350M English-speakers (I'm not arguing that this assertion is untrue, I'm questioning the reliability of the source cited in support of this assertion).  Also, does not the source cited in support of the assertion that the U.S. has only 251,388,301 English-speakers actually say that the U.S. has that many people who speak English at home? -- Boracay Bill 11:27, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You did right to revert.  Please see my post above here.  The previous statistics for India and China were not accurate (as I explain there).  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliability of supporting sources for recent changes 

message: Should we be including Nigeria's population when they're speaking Pidgin English? Isn't that a bit misleading? --seav 10:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I am aware (and I'm sure I could find a reliable reference for this) Nigerian  Pidgin is not a dialect of standard English.  The numbers of speakers of Nigerian Standard English is less than 500 thousand, but I haven't been able to find a good source for it yet.  See my query about it above.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anybody really believe that there are more native speakers of English in Nigeria than there are in Ireland?  "English as a first language, however, remains an exclusive preserve of a small minority of the country's urban elite, and is not spoken at all in some rural areas." The numbers are also suspiciously round. RandomCritic 19:45, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The comment in the table for Nigeria does say, "Figures are for speakers of Nigerian Pidgin.", a source for the figures is cited in the comment (per WP:V), the cited supporting source does  support the figures and does appear to be a reliable source. There may or may not be a valid argument to be made on either side of the question, "Should speakers of Nigerian Pidgin should be considered part of Nigeria's English-speaking population?" -- Boracay Bill 00:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, that note is _not_ present in the "List in order of native speakers", which simply and without comment claims that there are four million native speakers of English in Nigeria.  This is not true.  Second, the source cited is quite clear in referring to Nigerian Pidgin, as used by its native speakers, as a creole -- that is, an independent language wholly distinct from English, with its own grammar and vocabulary, as distinct from English as Kreyol is from French.  The argument not only "may or may not be... made" that the speakers of NP should not be enumerated among English speakers, but is correct and should prevail. RandomCritic 18:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

text: This article is on my watchlist and I do keep an eye on it (hence this exchange), but I don't consider myself a primary contributer to it. Nevertheless, following WP:BB, I have removed the Rank column from the first table, made the table sortable by column, and removedthe second table entirely. I have also added a footnote to the table with a disclaimer about Nigerian pidgin. If  there is strong feeling among watchers of this page that I have been too bold here, please revert the change and add a note to the second table that the data presented there comes from the source identified in the first table. -- Boracay Bill 02:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I have reverted your edit.  Ordering them according to rank, but (simply) not mentioning the rank, doesn't make much sense to me; in addition, it creates the potential for more trouble down the road, if people (for reasons unbeknownst) decide to change ranks or introduce new countries in the table.  This page has been riven in the past by edits motivated both by nationalism and by "one book expertise,"  (i.e. based on someone reading one book, and then footnoting it everywhere.)   It needs more constraints (like the rank column), not less.  Similarly, the native speakers table is important.  In addition to providing information, it serves as a touchstone for some healthy skepticism with regards the first list.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nigeria's Pidgin English 

message: The figure for native speakers in Germany (272,000) is striking, especially since it doesn't include non-German NATO personnel, and it makes me think that similar proportions may be present in France, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, China and other major economies, for which we do not have comparable figures. It is possible counts are not done because of political sensitivities. Can anyone provide this data? Grant | Talk 11:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect that what we actually have for Germany is the number of citizens of predominantly English-speaking countries (the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand) registered in Germany, and that we are extrapolating from that the number of native English speakers. Since other countries aren't as obsessive about keeping track of who lives in them as Germany is, we're unlikely to have those statistics for other countries. —Angr 15:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Native speakers in Germany & other non-ES nations 

message: The table correctly annotates where pidgin and creole varieties of English are included in the figures, but this makes the figures very hard to interpret. The case of Surinam is particularly misleading. The figure is attributed to Crystal (2005:109) but I am really not sure why Crystal included it. The creole in question, Sranan Tongo, has a historical connection with English but I dont think anyone, least of all its speakers, would call it a 'variety of English' or a 'dialect of English'. There is absolutely minimal mutual intelligibility with any variety of English, and English is really a foreign language in Surinam, though no doubt there are a few first language speakers and quite a lot of people will have learnt it at school (Dutch is the language of education). Counting Surinam as a country with a high proportion of English speakers is simply wrong in my view. The situation in Jamaica and Trinidad, for example (other countries where a creole is the vernacular) is more complex because in those countries, English is the language of education, and the creole speakers themselves in many cases regard themselves as speaking English, even though linguists might call that into question.
84.43.96.30 (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The inclusion of pidgin and creole varieties complicates the issue 

message: Update the Philippines natives speakers.... It's so outdated...1995?....I'm a native speaker and was born in 1995....but I don't count because the poll was taken before my birthday
:This should be updated when there is a reliable source of verifiable information to support the updated figure.  The source cited in support of the current figure is supported by data from the Philippine census of 2000. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 02:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: UPDATE!!!

message: Nigerian Pidgin may share some vocabulary with English but I think it is inaccurate to lump it together with English. Most English speakers would find it completely unintelligible.
http://alt-usage-english.org/Distribution_English_speakers.shtml lists the speakers of actual English as 14 million, but as that number comes from the 1995 Encyclopedia Britannica I'm not sure it can be included, although I'm sure because it may not be copyrightable as a simple fact. I will try and find a different source for the number of English speakers in Nigeria but failing that I plan to remove the Nigerian entry completely because I feel it is inaccurate. -- Gudeldar (talk) 01:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really agree. I'm an Arabic learner who sees how widely different Arabic dialects can be from each other, but the only way to treat Arabic is as a single "macrolanguage".  (I've been learning for 5 years now and have lived in the Arab world, and the differences are very, very strong.)  I think the same should be done for English.  I haven't been to Nigeria, but I understand Fela Kuti just fine... There are some different words like "yansh" for "ass" or "quench" for "die", and yes the grammar is different, but I find it intelligible. Agh.niyya (talk) 04:08, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: ^ Well, the relationship between Arabic dialects is not really comparable to the relationship between English and a creole lexified by English. The relationship between English and Nigerian Pidgin is probably more analogous to the relationship between Old French and Middle English. That is to say, no genetic relationship whatsoever. Nigerian Pidgin doesn't seem to be well studied. But its classificiation as a creole is sturdy, and a creole, by definition, is not classified in the family of its lexifier. The prototypical pidgin simply borrows words from its lexifier, not morphology. That's not to say it couldn't, but I don't think that would constitute classification as English. Of course, even if it did inherit morphology from English, that wouldn't classify it as English. Because English is not a language family, it's a language. So at best it would be classified as an English dialect. But it's nowhere near morphologically similar enough to any English dialect to be called an English dialect. So for it to be classified under or adjacent to, say, British English, English would need to be elevated into a language family. Which might happen eventually but we're definitely not there yet.Aminomancer (talk) 08:29, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is [[Nigerian Pidgin]] really English? 

message: Shouldn't supporting sources be cited for the population figures? Perhaps something like the following (data and supporting source based on List of countries by population: -- Boracay Bill (talk) 04:59, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supporting sources for population figures 

message: Is a "density of English Speakers" more informative than "Percentage of Enlighs Speakers"?  (On the right is anglophones, not English speakers.) WilyD 14:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percentage or Density? 

message: This explains significant changes which I have boldly made in the table entry for the U.S.
The entry  said that the "% of English Speakers" for the U.S. was 82.44%. That's like saying 17.6% don't speak English. That's about one of every five or six people. That's a lot. That's also counter-intuitive. 
The entry gave 304,952,000 for the "Total Population" figure, but used data from a report based on the year 2000 U.S. Census for the English speakers figures. I have changed the population figure to the 281,421,906 figure reported by Census 2000, sourced that figure, and explained its use in the comment. That brings the percentage figure up to 89.33%. The Census 2000 figure for U.S. population aged five and older was 262,375,152. If that figure were used in the percentage calculation, the result would be 95.8%. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 06:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Shouldnt the same thing apply to India too ? The English speakers number is from 1991 census data, when India's population was 821 million not 1132 million. So the percent of English speakers would be 10.9 %. I am invariant under co-ordinate transformations (talk) 16:36, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If the situation is as you describe it, Yes. See WP:SYNTH: "Editors should not make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article to come to the conclusion C." -- Boracay Bill (talk) 22:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  U.S. figures 

message: Here a recent paper by   (requires subscription for full article).  (Note: It uses "users" in a similar way as "speakers" in the TESOL post above.) It states at the outset: 
It goes on first to compute an adjusted number of 70 million English users: 
and then reduces the above estimate further by 60 million to 10 million English users, concluding with: 
So, what numbers were we using to compute the percentages for China?  We have to be careful about not exaggerating the numbers. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:04, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: China's numbers

message: A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries.  Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: New Discussion

message: To discourage the silly vandalism warring, I have semi-protected this article. If it persists from registered accounts, they will be blocked and the article fully protected. --Dweller (talk) 11:44, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article semi-protected 

message: I would strongly recommend for this article to be deleted. All it consists of is table listing people who may speak English in different countries. All the relevant information, especially the list of countries by number of native speakers, is already included in English language. The rest of the information is both trivial, contradictory and unreliable. For most European countries, the results of a survey in 2006 are given. I would like to remind everybody that unlike censuses that count speakers of language, this survey was a rather limited survey and the figures are estimates. What is more, they do not define what is meant by speaking English. Is it being fluent, being able to communicate or just knowing some English? For most languages outside Europe, Crystal (2005) is the only source. David Crystal is a brilliant academic, but what he presented in this book is also rough estimates. Apart from not being representative, I fear that the table also infringes on his copyright as it rips off a few pages in his book. There are also many countries with no sources at all, suggesting that some Wikipedia editor just made the figures up. Last but not least, what's the purpose of the article? It does not present accurate figures, it does not define its main concepts and it does not tell us anything not already included in other articles.JdeJ (talk) 10:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, all the figures from the Eurobarometer are plain wrong and it appears that the person who inserted them did not read the report. The Eurobarometer made a number of very restricted surveys among adult respondents in EU countries, the sample was around 1000 respondents per country. That is all that the Eurobarometer presents. After that, some Wikipedia editor have taken the percentages given the Eurobarometer, calculated those percetages on the whole population and claimed that the resulting number equals the number of English speakers per country! This is a rather obvious breach of WP:OR, not to mention that it is wrong. First, the respondents in the study were all adults, so calculating the returns on the whole population is incorrect. It is highly likely than 100 Swedes aged 25-35 will speak English than that 100 Swedes aged 5-10 will speak English. This limitation has been disregarded in this article. Even if it were not, using the results of a restricted survey to try to claim the total number of English speakers based on one's own calculations is quite obviously not a proper used of sources.JdeJ (talk) 13:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

text: When this suggestion was posted, [English Language] did not already include the list in this article. It only listed seven countries, and even those have since been removed.  This article is an extremely poor quality source, but for many countries, it is the only source I have been able to find. 伟思礼 (talk) 16:20, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

text: I agree. I've taken the liberty of copying your comment across to the current deletion discussion, since it seemed relevant. -- Avenue (talk) 10:23, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

text: Talk about rushing to delete an article. As mentioned by others on the afd page the article needs a major clean up, with more reliable sources.. surveys should never be used but none of that justifies deletion. If we had a single table on the English language article as someone suggested it would damage that article and make it too long. A full table (well sourced) fully deserves its own article and i hope it isnt deleted because a couple of people rush to judgement BritishWatcher (talk) 11:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The article needs to be improved, not deleted.  I don't think David Crystal's copyright is being violated either, given that most of his numbers are fantastic (as I've already indicated in my various posts above).  The solution is to not use Crystal's numbers and find other sources (as I did for China).    Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:28, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: PS I do agree with the nominator that the numbers for European countries (and perhaps for non-Anglophone countries) are mostly unreliable and should be removed; however, I think that the table in the English page is too short. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I am against the AfD nomination, as I find this a useful list, and I agree that "the article needs to be improved, not deleted". I think survey information has some value, so long as it's made clear that is all it is. One or two things on the page jarred with me. For an instance, when we get to Thailand English is called "secondary language of the elite", which is taken straight out of the CIA handbook, but it has such a vague meaning that it would be better left out. Umar Zulfikar Khan (talk) 05:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD? 

message: Israel's numbers are odd, the first table says 100,000 for speakers total and 100,000 for first language speakers.
There is obviously a problem here, I'll try to get other numbers if I can find any. KimiNewt (talk) 00:31, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The supporting source cited in the article says, "[eng] 100,000 in Israel (1993).  Alternate names: Anglit.  Classification: Indo-European, Germanic, West, English". Perhaps a better, more reliable, more timely source could be cited but such a source is not cited currently. I've restored the 100,000 figure to the Total English Speakers column and blanked the other columns. This now contradicts with the info for Israel in the List in order of native speakers table, which I haven't changed. I'm hoping that some info from a better source will turn up to allow all these figures to be updated. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 03:28, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Israel's numbers 

message: I have changed the percentage on the New Zealand figures.  91.2 percent while high by world standards will seem strangely low to anyone who has any experience with the country.  The census counts will reveal why.  There were 4,027,947 responses to the census.  3,673,679 gave English as a response, 81,936 had no English but another language.  The balance of 272,382 were; no language (too young) 75,195, no response 196,221, response unidentifiable 588, response outside scope 378 (no idea what this would entail, perhaps someone responding "I speak for the trees" and similar).  Hence it is more accurate to express the English speaking per cent without including the figures for these 272,382, which inspite of what was said in the info box was not done.  This gives 97.8% English-speaking, 2.2% non-English-speaking (3,673,679 and 81,936 divided by 3,755,565)
I have further removed the native English speakers number as it is patently ridiculous.  It is the number of English monoglots and would exclude for example a native speaker who learns Malay as an adult.  There is no way to extrapolate the number of native English speakers from the census data, it is best to go with the estimate quoted in the info box until and unless a more accurate measure w=can be found. Thecrystalcicero (talk) 03:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed the comment about NZ to indicate that. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 23:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: New Zealand

message: Would there be any objections to my removing the '<' from in front of the native figures speaker for Japan. It switches the sorting from numerical (0,1,2,3,4...9,10,11...99,100,101) to quasi-alphabetic (1,10,100, 101, 102, ...) --Neil (talk) 12:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, it would be more accurate to say that English education is mandatory for all high school students. While some spoken English classes are taught in the first year of high school, in the 2nd and 3rd years the focus is on grammar. Strictly speaking, students are English readers and writers, not speakers. The exams (and university entrance exams) are almost always paper tests, with no speaking required. Spacecowboy420 (talk) 07:03, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Japan

message: Almost all learn as first language english so its possible that in Serbia, english can be speaken well over 50% of population  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.116.163.86 (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Were is Serbia? 

message: in both lists Jamaica is listed at 2.6 million people, or basically the entire population. At the same time, Trinidad and Tobbago are listed at 1.1ish million people, or about one in 4. The remaining 3 of the 4 speak creole. Jamaican Patois is about as mutually intelligible with english as the various Trinidad/Tobbago creoles and english dialect. One of the two figures should change - either 2 million less Jamaicans, or 4 million more Trinbagonians.  
The same is true of Nigerian Pidgin -- it is less intelligible than the Trinbagonian creoles and dialects, especially when heard rather than written, yet it is counted.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.253.148 (talk) 23:43, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jamaica, Nigeria 

message: The Total Sum of the speakers of the table is 914,398,325. It isn´t 1,186 million. It´s false. Maybe the figure is possible but it´s neccesary the sources.--Migang2g (talk) 06:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The Total Sum of the speakers

message: Some people wondered about the high percentage of 87% English speakers in the Netherlands. On page 70 of the document from which that percentage was taken, the last heading of the table reads "Population 15+". This suggests that the surveys did not include subjects under the age of 15. So applying this percentage to the total population is incorrect.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Simonbr (talk • contribs) 08:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Sigh. We had the correct figure here from July 2006 to April 2009, calculated using the 15+ population figure given in the first annex to the Eurobarometer report. A series of compounding errors seems to have produced the current incorrect figure: someone added an irrelevant total population figure, another person calculated a percentage incorrectly as the number of speakers aged 15+ over the total population, and finally another person corrected the 15+ percentage but multiplied this by the total population figure to get the current incorrect number of speakers. I suspect similar problems affect many of the figures shown here. -- Avenue (talk) 12:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  False assumption in calculation of the total number of speakers 

message: How are English-speaking immigrants addressed (if at all)?  For example, in the table it appears that Spain has no people that speak English as a first language.  However, judging by the British migration to Spain article, I'd guess that there must be more than half a million residents that speak English as a first language. --Frumpo (talk) 22:28, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  English-speaking immigrants? 

message: I question why Finland's percentage English speakers is as low as 63%. All Finns are taught English to a similar high level as other Nordic countries. I will look for some sources. LibStar (talk) 07:17, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Finland

message: This page claims that there are 201,000,000 people in Sweden and that 94,000,000 speak English, however the total population of Sweden is only 10,302,984   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pavlo87 (talk • contribs) 18:53, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I fully agree. In Germany i would guess that about 10%-15% could speak English as good as native speaker not 56%. However, for Sweden and the Netherlands the figures might be right. Saying more than 80% are English-speaker seems to be realistic. --93.193.76.3 (talk) 16:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  As the page itself says - 'This includes both native speakers and second-language speakers of English' - that doesn't imply to me that one needs to speak as well as a native speaker. And indeed the page itself highlights the nature of the figures and how these should be treated with caution! --Neil (talk) 12:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes indeed. There are also many different definitions of who might count as an "English speaker", and I think the Eurobarometer question is not unusual. --Avenue (talk) 08:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exaggerated European numbers 

message: The table is updated but the image needs updating for Norway, currently it's gray (no data). I don't know how to edit the SVG.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.9.233.15 (talk) 01:58, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the map should be updated concerning Norway which I believe have quite a high number of English speakers. However, the percentage number for Norway in the table (91%) is somewhat puzzling to me as I cannot find that number, let alone the term "norway", in the source quoted (Eurobarometer 2005 Europeans and their Languages). In this regard, it actually makes sense that the Eurobarometer source does not include numbers for Norway as Norway is not a member of the EU! I have tried myself to find numbers for Norway in other sources but unfortunately without any luck. If anyone could find a number from a reliable source for Norway, it would be appreciated. Perhaps a native Norwegian could find a Norwegian government source online? In conclusion, the present percentage for Norway (91%) seems to be unsourced, and should be removed until a reliable source is found. 87.72.122.169 (talk) 09:50, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  What do they even mean that 90 % of people in Norway are English speakers? Maybe 90 % of the population has a basic understanding of English, but Norwegian is the official language - spoken by the vast majority of the population  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eskil S (talk • contribs) 07:39, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map needs update for Norway 

message: In the section "List in order of native speakers", reads: Hong Kong if ranked separately.
However, it isn't actually ranked at all, because China is missing from that list. 82.141.93.47 (talk) 05:54, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Native speakers list 

message: According to Philippines, population was under 90 million in 2007 census, here the year is said to be 2000, population is as 97 million... Where that 92.58% comes? 3.4 million is about 3 percent, if you add 63.71 result is around 67%, if you add 75 result is around 78%. And then you have 46,373 + 3,427 equals 89,8 million. Exactly what? If that 89,8 figure is actually right (which any percent is not proving) then additional speakers would be around 86,4 million. The populations and percents from different years go "nicely" together here. At best, it's quite a mess. 85.217.35.24 (talk) 08:27, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Some others have more english speakers than they have population, at least according to this list. I we believe the Crystal study from 2005, then we should have populations from that study also. Because according to wikipedia, US Virgin Islands, Gibraltar and Nauru don't have that kind of population even now. Marshall Islands might've had just enough, but there is no figure from 2005 in it's article. 82.141.119.188 (talk) 08:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried, but essentially failed, to correct the Philippines numbers; see the footnote for my reasoning.  At any rate they probably aren't off by orders of magnitude any more, at least if these changes stand.
Joe Bernstein, not a registered Wikipedian.
173.250.162.183 (talk) 22:52, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philippines notes and figures don't match 

message: The chart appears to be unable to distinguish significant digits.  If you sort by "% English Speakers," it lists everything that starts with a certain numeral in order, regardless of where the decimal point lies.  For example, Sri Lanka (9.9%) and Tanzania (9.89%) are listed near the top twenty, between Guyana (90.55%) and Sweden (89%).  I'm not so good with wiki chartmaking, so I'm not sure how this would be fixed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.85.236.176 (talk) 18:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Honestly, I consider this article too sloppily put together, too inconsistent, and too poorly sourced to be worth the effort of fixing the problem. But if you want to give it a go, you could take a look at the "Deaths" column in List of events named massacres as an example of how to make the corrections. 19:54, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Honesty, I cannot think of a better way to be dismissive, ignore real problems reported about an article, discourage the improvement of articles, and decrease the collective sharing of knowledge that is the spirit that allows wikipedia to exist.  The referred page for an example of how to fix it wraps everything with display:none tags which is a poor solution and requires editing each value and uses range values in the sorted column which is not recommended practice.  The Help:Sorting page has a good recommendation for a hidden header and footer for the sorting.  Unfortunately just adding the header and footer for this page does not produce the desired results as expr, selectively used, further complicates the sorting.  The empty values do not help but it seems those are empty because there are more speakers than eligible speakers. Quelrod (talk) 18:57, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Try removing the "%" symbols from the numbers.  The computer treats "9.9%" as a text string which comes after "10.0%", but treats "9.9" as a number which comes befoire "10.0". Martinvl (talk) 10:27, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This works.  Now we need to do the same on other columns. Martinvl (talk) 12:10, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percentage sorting error 

message: Fluent? Conversationalist?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.43.27.98 (talk) 01:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the problem with this list. It depends on the source --91.15.78.133 (talk) 18:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

text: And even the definition of fluency might vary. In some countries "very good knowledge" might be the same as "average" in other countries. --Oddeivind (talk) 06:56, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  How is "Speaks English" defined? 

message: Throughout this article, and especially in the chart, a multitude of references point to "Crystal (2005)." The only problem? There is no "Crystal (2005)" in the resources section of the article, or anywhere else here. There's nothing that indicates what book "Crystal (2005)" is meant to be. There's a Crystal book from 1995 listed, but not one from 2005. So someone who wishes to consult "Crystal (2005)" as a primary source has nowhere to go. Totally annoying! Moncrief (talk) 21:07, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The webpage in the existing reference indicates a 2nd Edition in 2003, but not 2005. I don't have access so can't check as to its content agreeing with what is in the article. Melcombe (talk) 22:19, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: My point is that the abbreviated cite "Crystal (2005)" is only helpful if one can then find elsewhere in the article the full cite. Since there is no cite for a work by Crystal for any year but 1995, "Crystal (2005)" is totally unhelpful. Particularly due to the fact that David Crystal has written dozens of books. If "Crystal (2005)" is meant to refer to "Crystal, David (2003-08-03) [1995]. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Second ed.)", which is the only full Crystal reference on the page, then the year in the full reference should be changed from 1995 to 2005 so it corresponds with all the "Crytsal (2005)"s. If it's another book, then I'm totally lost. (Edit: The "2003" in the cite seems to refer to the date the page was accessed, or at least that's usually what parenthetical dates refer to. Still isn't 2005, in any case.)  Moncrief (talk) 22:34, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: My point was that "Crystal (2005)" should possibly be "Crystal (2003)" in both text and the references, but I can't confirm it. The "(2003-08-03)" might actually be the date of publication of the 2nd Edition, although Amazon says (4 Aug 2003), while CUP says September 2003. The 1st Edition was definitely dated 1995. Melcombe (talk) 17:30, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Who can confirm it? As it is, it's unhelpful and inaccurate. Moncrief (talk) 19:13, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Melcombe is correct, a 2005 edition does not exist, instead it is the 2nd Edition from 2003 that is referred to. That is, at least, what can be found out from a search on book.google.com and cambridge.org. Perhaps the erroneous year 2005 was a result from a mix up with the source Ethnologue (2005) or maybe the year of printing of a 2nd Edition (2003) book printed in 2005? I will go ahead and amend all the Crystal (2005) references to read Crystal (2003). Still it would be nice if someone, in possession of the 2nd Edition (2003) book, could confirm that the references in this article really point to that book.  188.183.23.90 (talk) 01:21, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crystal (2005)? 

message: The information from the 
"List in order of native speakers" is already found within the above 
"List in order of total speakers"
The only thing required to highlight that information is to sort the main list by the "As first language" column which makes the second list redundant except for the lack of coherence between the lists that make wikipedia look unprofessional.
Seeing that there is much discussion about India being the #1 English speaking country, I cannot escape the impression that the USA population being a major part in the english wikipedia community is the sole reason behind the second redundant list and the pie chart displaying the USA as the biggest part. There should not be any place for such a nationalist biased perspective if english wikipedia ever wants to be taken seriously. It is not the first time I've seen this.
So I say we merge the second list into the first, correcting the incoherences that exist among them in the process.
Example of such conflicts include Nigeria, NZ and SA not being in the same positions as in the second list, there shouldn't be contradictory information and a merger would prevent that from happening again.
If there's anything wrong with this merger idea please tell me, if on the contrary you support it, please help me, I have never dealt with cited content removal before. Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sinekonata (talk • contribs) 17:26, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "List in order of native speakers" should be merged with "List in order of total speakers". 

message: The single-digit English percentage figure for the Turks and Caicos islands is very, very wrong. It is the official language and is used by everyone except for migrants from Haiti and the DR. I don't know of any official figures or source to get a figure but it cannot be much different from the Bahamas in the 80% - 90% range.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.95.21 (talk) 21:45, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turks and Caicos islands figure incorrect 

message: See title.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.102.212.216 (talk) 12:47, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  What does it mean by eligible population? 

message: They are respectively an oversea department and an oversea territory of France. They do not belong in those lists any more than Hawaii or South East England. Khaur (talk) 10:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why are Guadeloupe and Saint Pierre and Miquelon listed as countries? 

message: Since the second list can be obtained by sorting the first one according to the right column, its only added value (IMO) is that lines are thinner and therefore slightly more readable. It it sufficient to warrant its presence? Khaur (talk) 10:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usefulness of the second list 

message: I have deleted the useless Ranking column, all the numbers would have to be changed every time a country is added or changes its status. Ranking can still be found by using the sort function.
Also, I have added Argentina.24.108.61.172 (talk) 06:21, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranking number 

message: An IP has removed the European Union from the chart, with the comment that it is not a country. While that is certainly true, I feel the entry itself made it clear that it wasn't a country, and having the EU in the table is extremely useful for comparative purposes. I'd like to re-add it. Any thoughts? Grayfell (talk) 01:38, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I have re-introduced the note on EU beneath the table (amended with 2012 numbers). I think EU has been added to and removed from the table a couple of times in the past, one could browse through the article's history to instigate that further. If you take a very rational and strict point of view, I don't think EU should be added to the list, because obviously it's not a country. That said, I don't think many people would strongly oppose that EU has an entry in the list because of the role EU has in the world, historically and presently. EU and US numbers are, for instance, compared frequently, so in that regard it could make sense. However, the trouble with adding political unions to the list starts if a lot of different unions are added. You could in principle add all sorts of unions, organizations and regions, such as the Arab Union, NATO, Commonwealth of Nations, South America, Scandinavia, and so on. I would think that it's better that the list stays focused on countries only, it's more clean that way, and (for a start) unions etc. can be added as notes underneath the list. 90.184.5.10 (talk) 19:42, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of European Union data 

message: Link [30] seems to be a spam? What is the meaning of "Languages spoknfsjkNvkjfsnvnsflknvkler en"? A cat on the keyboard?
Please update it, thanks!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sleepsort (talk • contribs) 13:04, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: That was vandalism added by 86.13.25.185 on 25 January. Thanks for spotting it. SiBr4 ("CyberFour") (talk) 13:56, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

text: Thanks! Can you please help us remove the hyperlink as well? The page it points to is no longer valid. Sleepsort (talk) 02:18, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Per WP:Link rot, links to sources shouldn't be removed just because they don't work. A dead link can be either tagged with  or directly replaced by a different link to the same source (or another source altogether). SiBr4 ("CyberFour") (talk) 19:04, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  something wrong on section: Notes 

message: The number of english speakers in Ghana seemed low to me, so I wanted to check the source, but reference [18] was broken, http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/apics/images/0/00/SurveyGhana.pdf. I looked at the wikipedia page for Ghana and there it says that 90% of the population speaks English, with a reference that works, reference [94] on that page, "2010 Population and Housing Census". Maybe this should be updated?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.240.84.63 (talk) 14:51, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ghana 

message: Euromonitor International is a private market-intelligence company.  Its data is not peer-reviewed, therefore not scholarly or reliable.  Its estimate that 49% of Pakistanis in 2009 spoke English at an intermediate level of proficiency doesn't correlate with  UNICEF's adult literacy rate for Pakistan (averaged for 2008–2012), which is 54.2%.  It doesn't correlate with the Pakistani government's own statistics for 2011, according to which some 80% of its citizens do not finish high school (see this report, page 13).   By contrast, India, with an 8 percentage point higher literacy rate, a 26 percentage point higher primary school enrolment and a century longer history of British colonial presence has only 20% English speakers (and that I believe is a very optimistic number).  Something is not adding up here.  I suggest that we not use the Euromonitor report for our statistics.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:22, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: A number of sources have reported similar stat. E.g. . I am not sure if these stats are correct or not. OccultZone (Talk) 13:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The report you mention and others I've seen are Pakistani newspapers repeating the Euromonitor numbers.  I'll try to find some older stats.  If we find that numbers have jumped dramatically between (say) 1999 and 2009, without a similar dramatic jump in literacy, urbanization etc, then something is screwy.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:22, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

text: Another source is an online paper, by Tariq Rahman, discussing English speakers in Pakistan. The publication date seems to be 09 Feb 2005 according to this site. On page 5 of the paper, a 1997 edition of 'English as a Global Language'  (Crystal) is referenced with a 11.39 percentage of English speakers in Pakistan. Also see page 33, where the percentage of circulation of English periodicals (newspapers?) is estimated as 10.51 to the total circulation of periodicals. --90.185.131.137 (talk) 09:00, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Further, in "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language", Crystal, 2003, page 109, the numbers of Pakistan are: Population(1990): 122,600,000, % L1 speakers: N/A, Total L1 speakers: N/A, % L2 speakers: 2, L2 speakers: 2,450,000. --90.185.131.137 (talk) 09:41, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I managed to find the book "English as a Global Language", 2nd Ed., Crystal, 2003. Pages 62 through 65 contain a table that lists 'Speakers of English in territories where the language has had special relevance'. Page 64 lists Pakistan with the numbers: Population (2001): 145,000,000, Usage estimate - L2 speakers: 17,000,000. L1 speakers are not mentioned. --90.185.131.137 (talk) 09:58, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pakistan 

message: English-speaking_world#English-speaking_countries_in_order_of_total_speakers: 125m English-speakers in India.
List of countries by English-speaking population: 250m English-speakers in India.
Both claim to be from the 2001 census and to include English-speakers but not English-users.
Is one of them wrong or am I missing some crucial distinction?
Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 15:35, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Extraordinary census claims have to be taken with a great deal of skepticism because they rely solely on self-reporting, which is often not reliable. Yes, people lie, misrepresent, exaggerate or sometimes just plain don't understand the question. For example, according to the UK census, Jedi is a major religion there (see Jedi census phenomenon). The claim that there are either 125 or 250 million English speakers in India seems extremely inflated, unless one defines English speaker as anyone who can say "Hello" or "Thank you", or thinks they can. Which is a second problem here. Neither "English speaker" or "English user" is defined, beyond a simple positive response to the question. There is no way to gauge competence. For an extraordinary claim of this sort, you would require a very high-quality scholarly survey that was published with the benefit of academic peer review. Anything else would be useless, as are these census figures. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:51, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Please read the discussion upstairs: Talk:List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population#India.27s_Exaggerated_.28Tripled.29_Numbers (from 2009).  The 2001 census numbers from India are 125 million (86 million English-as-second-language speakers, and 40 million third language speakers), not 250 (see here).  True it is self-reporting, and the numbers are exaggerated, but the level of proficiency is more than just "Hello" and "Thank you."  Also, in India, often there is greater written proficiency than oral.  One measure of this is the quality of English-language newspapers.  Besides there are other organizations such as TESOL-India (Teachers of English as a Second Language( which have made their own estimates which roughly jibe with the census's numbers.  India's case is a little different from, say, Continental Europe or China or South America.  It has a long history of English use, going back to the late 18th century, 1773 to be precise, when the East India Company established an administration in Calcutta.  Even though there is disagreement about whether Indian English is a "proper" dialect of English (not least among Indians themselves), there is widespread recognition of this language variety, not just in the almost 800 references in the OED, but also in the burgeoning literature on its phonology and syntax, beginnings of attempts at codifying it.  There are estimates in this literature as well, which I don't have access to this minute (on account of traveling).  In the last 15 years, as the literacy numbers in India have increased, the number of English speakers likely have as well.  My own guess of the 2001 numbers is somewhere between 55 and 75 million second language speakers. There are likely more, perhaps 85 to 100 million, today.  The level of fluency varies.  It depends too on what you consider fluency and how you measure it.  For example, they might not be able to give the most precise directions, but they often know idiomatic expressions in English.  In Continental Europe, it is often just the opposite.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:15, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discrepancy with [[English-speaking_world#English-speaking_countries_in_order_of_total_speakers]]  

message: hey, the map shows that iran has 0% english-speaking population, but the table shows that 42% of the iranian population speak english, please fix the map.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.29.14.173 (talk) 15:16, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iran 

message: According to the list, English speaking people in Ghana made up about 20% of population, but in the article Ghana, it says that about 67.1% of population speaks English. This last one being the official position according to the government, as seen here: http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/docfiles/2010phc/Census2010_Summary_report_of_final_results.pdf
--Goose friend (talk) 05:58, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ghana 

message: I think the article has improved a great deal over time with more countries being added, and, in most cases, reliable sources have been added to back up the numbers. At the moment, the sources are listed in the 'Comments' column, and the numbers (% English speakers, Total English speakers, etc.) are listed just as bare numbers. The reason for this may be that the table is then easily sorted by clicking on each of the column headers and it's also quite easy to copy the numbers to a spreadsheet. However, often it is not clear how the numbers are calculated and what reference is the basis for a given number, in particular when more than one reference is given in the Comments column. So, in this relation I think it's interesting to compare with the Spanish language article, see this section. Notice that almost every number is referenced. Copying the clean number to a spreadsheet is probably difficult though, and the sorting mechanism of the table seems to be half broken. When this is said, I am actually leaning towards the way the numbers in the Spanish table are sourced. I won't change the English language table for now though (it's a huge task anyway), just wanted to point to the Spanish language article to illustrate how a similar table is arranged. --2.110.114.86 (talk) 20:15, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  How should the numbers be sourced? 

message: Is this a joke? The list of countries in order of native speakers has Austria on 77th place with 16 (!) native speakers. I have more native speakers than that in my immediate circle of friends here in Vienna. Unfortunately I don't know how many there really are but it's more than 100000 in Vienna alone, I'm sure. I will delete this line since it's so obviously and absurdly wrong and not sourced either. I will try to find a source for how many there really are. 84.114.17.61 (talk) 08:25, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Austria 16 native speakers 

message: As part of updating the article English language, I have been checking and rechecking statistics on English language use around the world since December 2014. I'll be updating this article too as I type out citations to the sources I have checked. I invite all of you to comment on updates I make to this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:22, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'll be cleaning up the references here 

message: Why is Puerto Rico included on the chart?  It is not a sovereign, independent nation-state, nor anything close.  It's a territory of the United States.  If Puerto Rico is included, logical consistency would demand that Washington DC be included as well, as their status within the US is comparable (e.g. they both elect a single, non-voting at-large representative to Congress). 107.3.44.127 (talk) 15:02, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Puerto Rico 

message: There have been a number of attempts to update the numbers for India, without bothering to cite sources. Are there more up to date sources on this? Serendipodous 21:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updated info for India? 

message: The entry on Demographics of Nauru states that only 60% of the population speaks English, not 100%. Demographics of Marshall Islands also seems to contradict the 100% figure.DanTrent (talk) 21:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nauru 

message: I have seen that adding PC-protection has reduced pure vandalism from users (that is, adding silly stuff to or blanking sections of the page) - now I've noticed that IPs are mainly changing the numbers without providing evidence in the way of sources. Let's see what happens; if this keeps going on, it might necessitate increasing the protection level to semi. <<< SOME GADGET GEEK >>> (talk) 23:42, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ways to stop unverified changes 

message: I was just looking at two of the figures in the list:
# Brazil: 10.5 million English speakers out of 205 million citizens.
#* Listed percentage: 5%
#* Calculated percentage: 5%
# China: 10 million English speakers out of 1,200 million people.
#* Listed percentage: 8%
#* Calculated percentage: 0.8%
The Chinese percentage is out by a factor of 10. The Chinese figure is being calculated by adding together the 100 million people who have learned elementary English in order to pursue a university education with the ten million who speak the language. The Brazilian percentage would probably be double if you added the 6% of the population that speak rudimentary English. The issues with the statistics for China and India have been discussed above, but I think this page is rather misleading in applying different criteria for English usage by country. This will always be an issue with this kind of compilation, but here the disparity in criteria used appears rather starkly when we conclude that there's 10x more English speakers in China than there actually are but not using the same criteria for another large country, Brazil.
We probably ought to collectively decide what level of competency is required for use in the calculation of the "percentage of English speakers" column otherwise we'll lead any reader who takes a few minutes with a calculator to run the statistics to bang their head on the desk and shout "WTF?" at their computer screen. How do we do this without violating no original research? —Tom Morris (talk) 19:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It's difficult to define the level of competency of an "English speaker" because, naturally, there is a large spread in the ability, e.g. in one end of the scale, the ability is very basic whereas the ability in the other end of the scale approaches the level of a native speaker. Note that the numbers given in the table are often obtained by finding the percentage first from a survey, after which the number of English speakers are calculated using the considered country's population in a given year. The English level is therefore determined by the formulation of the questions in the survey and the subjective response to the questions. For instance, in the Eurobarometer 2012 report, the respondents were asked questions such as "what languages, other than their mother tongue, they were able to speak well enough to hold a conversation" which leaves plenty of flexibility in the definition of the speaking level. With this in mind, it's important to provide citations with the numbers in the table, so that the source (survey etc.) of each number can tracked. 80.62.117.233 (talk) 14:11, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers don't add up 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Only around 6% of Hongkongers speak English well, HKU study shows; a reliable source? D_T_G (PL) 10:23, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hong Kong 6% 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The table goes funny when sorting it like that  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.172.136.165 (talk) 19:34, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  When sorting by % English Speakers the sort is according to STRING VALUE i.e. 9% comes before 89% because 9 has a higher ascii value than 89... 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello all,
The Nauru Statistics read 
Percentage English Speakers 96.26
Eligible Pop: 10,300
Total English Speakers: 800
As First Language: 9500
I think the person who entered the numbers didn't realize what the "As First Language" box meant. It should be a fraction of the Total English Speakers box.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.254.1.152 (talk) 07:39, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nauru Statistics don't make any sense 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I cannot find yet the official results on abs.gov.au for the 2016 Census, but a third party has compiled numbers here: http://profile.id.com.au/australia/speaks-english?BMID=50&StartYear=2016 There has been an increase in the population, a decrease in the percentage of 'native' English speakers, and increase in 'non-native' speakers who report proficiency in English. So overall the number of English speakers has increased to 21,089,025. 60.240.207.146 (talk) 00:14, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australia 2016 numbers 

message: The numbers for the Marshall Islands are contradictory. A population of 59000 cannot have 60000 English speakers. --Danski454 (talk) 21:33, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: The description of the map file :commons:File:Percentage of English speakers by country as of 2014.png lists the sources as:
"EF English Proficiency Index - A comprehensive ranking of countries by English skills", World Factbook CIA. Both of these sources have got nothing to do with the number of English language speakers in a country: EF lists the proficiency of English speakers not the number of speakers; CIA-WFB lists the population of countries, nothing about language. Its clear these aren't the map's sources and that the map is unreliable. 
Seeing this I think the map should be removed from the article. Gotitbro (talk) 10:13, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. This map appears to be original research/synthesis. valereee (talk) 09:56, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unreliable map 

message: Why on this list there are not many countries such like United Arab Emirates. Dubai has much more pagewatchers than Ghana it would be interesing see where United Arab Emirates are on this list. Dawid2009 (talk) 09:32, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: It says Iraq has 11 million English speakers! Actually Iraqis speak either Arabic or Kurdish and there are other minor languages as well. The correct figure is probably less than 0.1% of the population.--Kiatdd (talk) 20:19, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iraq has 11 million English speakers?! 

message: Kenya cencus were done recently and population is actually more than figures given Sk gitau (talk) 16:19, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  update 

message: I am very impressed! It is very good as what i was saying. This could help me move to a different country! Thanks! LuigiIsSuppreme989 (talk) 19:09, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is good! 

message: Where is South Korea on this list? 2601:681:4302:D540:5DF1:97C6:CCCF:4BF7 (talk) 09:56, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  South Korea 

message: this was supposed to be merged Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Geographical distribution of English speakers, there was a discussion with ,  did the merge, but then undid it. Irtapil (talk) 21:26, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I merged it. Interstellarity (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge 

message: Additional research may be needed  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rivastons (talk • contribs) 17:40, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Croatia has more non-native English speakers than total number 

message: Indonesia is missing from the list.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:3D09:AB8A:E400:61D0:A083:8D3D:3CFD (talk) 17:45, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indonesia 

message: Please review yo statistics regarding english speakers in uganda.. i think we deserve a solid 80% or even more 197.239.5.154 (talk) 19:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  English speaking in uganda 

message: Hi 2402:3A80:99E:19DF:0:6B:8900:E301 (talk) 03:27, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  English 

message: 1. The map doesn't just contain the second language speakers, but also the foreign language speakers.
2. Austria 60-90%. Impossible. This number either comes from only Wienna and Graz, or mixed up with Australia. You can't even order in a restaurant in that country.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.167.198 (talk) 10:36, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Errors 

message: the map featured at the top is terrible someone has to update it, it is coloured according to the old unreliable statistics we used to have on the page. Lets take a look at the problems.
Nepal is coloured as if it as 60% english speakers, same as Pakistan.
Iran is coloured as if it has 60% english speakers but there arent even any statistics for iran.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by PreserveOurHistory (talk • contribs) 09:32, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  MAP IS RIDICULOUS  

message: As discussed on reddit there are several problems with the article. I removed the map after errors have been spotted and I couldn't find the source data for many countries. --mfb (talk) 15:02, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed map, table needs more work (June 2022) 

message: The data for many of the countries is absolute bullcrap. I've been to Fiji and didn't meet anyone who didn't speak English, yet you're saying that only 19% of Fiji speaks English? Also, the majority of the population of most EU countries can speak English. I've been told that at least 60% of Poles can speak English and more than 80% of Germans can too. I even found a source that says almost 50% of Ukraine can speak English. I also have strong doubts about the stats for South Africa, almost everyone there can speak English. Please review this.  Thiscouldbeauser (talk) 05:04, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lots of doubts 

message: no way india and soith africa should have almost the same color as china and russia. the whole map doesn't make sense. 213.55.220.134 (talk) 16:34, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  this entire map is bullshit. 

message: The whole article is just a mess. Weird and unexplained numbers, unclear definitions of speakers and languages, unreliable sources or none at all (eg. the source cited is "Uganda Bureau of Statistics, yet there is no link to verify that). The article is not helpful at all and will leave the reader confused. I suggest the entire article is either deleted or completely rewritten. 
If it were to be rewritten, there would need to be a definition for an English-speakers, as well as what varieties are included. Numbers and statistics would only be taken from reliable sources, preferably from governmental sources such as censuses. Additionally, citations are circular (see the statistics on Pakistan; one book cited actually reads "According to Wikipedia..."). Rather than having the mess of total speakers, native speakers, additional speakers and %, it should instead just have the percentage of each country's population that speaks English, both natively and as a second language. In this instance the Eurobarometer sources would make more sense and getting accurate sources would be helpful, as many countries just state how many of the adult population has proficiency in x language. Then the specification of the statistic as a sidenote (eg. percentage of people aged 15-64 who...). 
Then there could be a separate section on the countries with the most native/total language speakers. This is done in many religion articles. This would leave out unnecessary information, no need to show that 2 people in y country speak English as their first language. They could be from a separate source than the one of the %, as long as it's consistent with itself and reliable. For the map, it is very confusing and contradictory, and is probably best just taken out of the article, considering the differences in sources and their years. Finlandestonia (talk) 22:51, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whole article needs to be rewritten/deleted