In a world with 5,000 spoken languages, it’s a rare tongue that sticks out. But consider what’s the primary lingo in Guyana, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, and Dominica. Or the official language in Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Rwanda, the Federated States of Micronesia and Papua New Guinea.



Now it may not rank as the most spoken first language on the planet. That honor probably goes to Mandarin Chinese with well over a billion speakers. And it’s also outranked by Hindi in the number of native speakers. But the most widely learned second language in the world has got to be English. This linguistic export of the British Isles is understood and spoken to some degree by 1/4 to 1/3 of humanity.



Look at the United Nations, for example. There’s a polyglot group, if every there was one. Back in 2001 the member countries of the United Nations participated in a poll. it simply asked, which language they wanted to use to communicate with embassies from other countries. The 189 members split among three. 20 members chose Spanish - an easily pronounced though sometimes fiery tongue. another 40 went with French - rich in history and fattening sauces. But the lion’s share sided with English - that salt and vinegar, stubby-worded, no-nonsense, preposition-dependent amalgam of a language.