Due to the long-term British colonial rule in these countries, English has been popular as an official language, which has led to the rapid growth of the English-speaking population and gradually replaced the population who spoke local dialects before the colonial period, thus creating a variety of English with national mother tongue characteristics different from British English in these countries and regions.
The dominant culture of most countries and regions whose mother tongue is English is formed around English. However, with the increase of immigrants from all over the world, the languages of these countries and regions tend to be diversified, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other major English-speaking countries, and language diversification and localization are increasingly prominent.
Extended data show that there are 1 10 countries in the world where English is their mother tongue, official language or common second language. No language is so widely used in the world. Historically, the internationality of English is largely attributed to the global influence of the British Empire.
Other key factors include: the dominance of the United States and Britain in world economic and cultural affairs in the past two centuries. The country with the largest number of native English speakers is the United States (225 million). Followed by Britain (55.6 million), Canada (654.38+09.4 million) and Australia (654.38+05.6 million). Other major countries are South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand and Singapore.
As far as the use of English as a mother tongue rather than a second or official language is concerned, English is the third most common language in the world (335 million people). As far as English-speaking countries are concerned, Arabic is the second largest language after English, and English is widely used in 60 countries. There are 242 million people in the world whose mother tongue is Arabic, and most of them live in North Africa and the Middle East.