In Which Countries do People Speak English?

Where do people speak English? It’s an important question if you’re wondering how important it is to speak English. There approximately 7.8 billion people in the world, and 1.35 billion speak English. That’s 17% of the world’s population that speaks English, so if you speak English, you can have a chat with 17% of people in the world. Amazingly enough, only 360 million people speak English as their first language, which means that there are about 3x as many non-native English speakers as there are native English speakers. So, odds are that most of the people you speak English with had to learn English just like you. They might also have mistakes in their English, just like you. Isn’t that a comforting thought?

Where do native English speakers come from?

We’ll start with the most widely known English speaking countries. Weirdly enough, the most famous English speaking countries don’t give English any kind of official status. All of the countries in the above list (except Canada), do not have English an official language. English is the predominant language of both the government and the population, but it doesn’t have an official ‘de jure’ status.

There are other ways of thinking about the question “Where do people speak English?”. We can consider how official the language is.

Countries where English is an official language

There are also places that are not fully sovereign countries which has English as a de jure official language

Countries where English is a ‘de facto’ language

In which countries do the most people speak English?

Maybe you aren’t bothered by whether English is an official de jure language, or just a de facto language. Let’s go back to our first question: Where do people speak English? If you went on vacation, where could you go and make use of your English skills? There are a few ways to look at it. Let’s start with the percentage of the population that speaks English. There are 42 countries where more than 80% of the population speaks English. That’s a lot of choice ranging from Europe, Africa, North America, Oceania, and the Caribean. There are 61 countries where at least half the population speak English. That’s 61 countries where you have a 1 in 2 chance of meeting someone that speaks English. Of course those figures are national, and big cities have very different numbers than national statistics. For example, in Poland, 37% of the population speaks English, while I would assume that a minimum of 60% of people in the capital city of Warsaw speak English.

The following table shows countries and the percentage of their population that speaks Enlgish.

Country	% of Population that speaks English
Gibraltar	100
Barbados	100
Isle of Man	99.93
Ireland	98.37
Marshall Islands	98.33
United Kingdom	98.3
New Zealand	97.82
Jamaica	97.64
Bermuda	96.92
Nauru	96.67
U.S. Virgin Islands	95.97
United States	95.5
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	95
Dominica	94.03
Australia	92.80
Palau	92.5
Anguilla	92.31
Guam	91.09
Grenada	90.91
Netherlands	90.90
Guyana	90.55
Norway	90
Uganda	89.9
Sweden	89
Malta	89
Trinidad and Tobago	87.74
Bahamas	87.13
Suriname	87.09
British Virgin Islands	86.96
Nigeria	86.42
Denmark	86
Israel	84.97
Vanuatu	83.55
Sierra Leone	83.53
Northern Mariana Islands	83.33
Singapore	83.10
Canada	83.06
Liberia	82.67
Zimbabwe	82.07
Belize	81.65
American Samoa	80.1
Antigua and Barbuda	80
Saint Kitts and Nevis	78
Cayman Islands	76.6
Finland	75
Austria	73
Cyprus	73
Montserrat	67.8
Ghana	66.67
Malaysia	62.57
Sri Lanka	62
Switzerland	61.28
Belgium	60
Croatia	60.00
Slovenia	59
Philippines	58.2
Federated States of Micronesia	57.66
Germany	56
Luxembourg	56
Greece	51
Estonia	50
World	15.14