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Approximately 360–400 million people speak English as their first language. More than half of these (231 million) live in the United States, followed by some 60 million in the United Kingdom, the first place where English was spoken. English is the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly, from 470 million to more than 1 billion. David Crystal calculates that non-native speakers as of 2003 outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. When combining native and non-native speakers, English is the most widely spoken language worldwide. Besides the major varieties of English, such as British English, North American English, Australian English, South African English, New Zealand English and their sub-varieties, countries such as the Philippines, Jamaica and Nigeria also have millions of native speakers of dialect continua ranging from English-based creole languages to Standard English. ==Majority English-speaking countries== There are six countries with a majority of native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). These six countries are also grouped under the term Anglosphere. In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages or new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. Besides these, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have majorities natively speaking an English creole, or a patois in a "post-creole continuum". Other substantial communities of native speakers are found in South Africa (4.8 million), Nigeria (4 million, 5%), and Singapore (1 million, 17%). English is also the primary language in the island states and territories of Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guernsey, Guyana, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Montserrat, Nauru, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「English-speaking world」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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