By Quick facts
- Name in English
- English
- Language family
- Indo-European › Germanic
- Writing system
- Latin alphabet — alphabet, left to right
- Where it began
- England (Anglo-Saxon settlement)
- Main countries
- United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cameroon, South Sudan, Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho, Eswatini, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Jamaica, Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu
- ISO 639-3 code
eng
Where English ranks
English is the 1st most-spoken language in the world by total speakers [1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.
- 1English1.5B
- 2Mandarin Chinese1.2B
- 3Hindi611M
- 4Spanish561M
- 5Modern Standard Arabic335M
- 6French334M
- 7Bengali274M
“How are you?” in English
How are you?
आप कैसे हैं?
āp kaise haĩ?
Formal, to a man; to a woman: आप कैसी हैं? (āp kaisī haĩ?)
Phrases: see sources. Other languages' phrases come from the sources on their own pages. Synthetic voice (ElevenLabs Eleven v3, voice “Sia”). Pronunciation is approximate and may not match a native speaker; Cantonese and Wu Chinese are not voiced because the model reads Chinese characters with Mandarin sounds.
A short history
English is a West Germanic language brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers from the 5th century; after the Norman Conquest of 1066 it absorbed a large French vocabulary, which is why it has pairs like 'cow' and 'beef'[3].
William Caxton set up the first printing press in England in 1476, and printers fixed many spellings just as the Great Vowel Shift was changing how long vowels were pronounced. Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1755 helped settle spelling further[3].
The design of Latin alphabet
An alphabet: separate letters for consonants and vowels, written left to right. The Romans took it from a Greek alphabet by way of the Etruscans[5], and it is now the most widely used script in the world[4]. Most languages that use it add marks or extra letters for their own sounds[6].
Alphabet. One letter for each consonant and vowel.
- Kind
- Alphabet
- Direction
- Left to right
- Took shape
- By the 7th century BCE in central Italy
- Line of descent
- Egyptian hieroglyphs → Proto-Sinaitic → Phoenician → Greek → Etruscan → Latin
- Traditional surface
- Parchment and vellum
- Own digits
- No — uses the Western 0–9
- Egyptian hieroglyphs
- Proto-Sinaitic
- Phoenician
- Greek
- Etruscan
- Latin
Two alphabets in one
Capitals come from the square capitals the Romans carved in stone[7]; small letters come from Carolingian minuscule, a rounded book hand standardised in Charlemagne's empire in the late 8th century[8]. Writing with both is called case, and software has to know which pairs belong together[6].
Built to be extended
Rather than inventing new letters, most languages bolt marks onto old ones: é, ñ, ç, ş, ọ. Unicode encodes many as single letters and also as a base letter plus a combining mark, so the same word can be stored two ways[6].
Gothic or roman
Through the Middle Ages much of Europe wrote and printed in blackletter. German kept its Fraktur style for everyday print far longer than its neighbours, until the 20th century[9].
Spelling that remembers old sounds
Spellings were fixed by early printers while pronunciation kept moving, so 'knight' keeps a k and gh that were once spoken[3].
Letters it lost
Old English used extra letters such as þ (thorn), ð (eth) and æ (ash); they fell out of use and were replaced by th and a[3,4].
Explore the letters
English's relatives among the 38
English belongs to the Indo-European family (Germanic). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.
- DeutschGermanSame branch: Germanic · 133M
- हिन्दीHindiIndo-Aryan · 611M
- españolSpanishRomance · 561M
- françaisFrenchRomance · 334M
- বাংলাBengaliIndo-Aryan · 274M
- portuguêsPortugueseRomance · 269M
- اُردُوUrduIndo-Aryan · 246M
- русскийRussianBalto-Slavic · 210M
- मराठीMarathiIndo-Aryan · 99M
- پنجابیWestern PunjabiIndo-Aryan · 90M
- فارسیPersian (Iranian)Iranian · 82M
- italianoItalianRomance · 66M
- ગુજરાતીGujaratiIndo-Aryan · 62M
- भोजपुरीBhojpuriIndo-Aryan (Bihari) · 53M
English across the hub
The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on English.
- Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
- Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
- Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
- Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
- See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region
Frequently asked questions
How many people speak English?
About 1.49 billion people speak English: 372 million as a first language and 1.12 billion as a second, according to Ethnologue's 2026 figures. That makes it the 1st most-spoken language in the world by total speakers.
What script is English written in?
English is written in the Latin alphabet, an alphabet: one letter for each consonant and vowel. It runs left to right.
How do you say "How are you?" in English?
In English, "How are you?" is How are you?.
Where is English spoken?
English is spoken mainly in United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Nigeria and many other countries. It began in England (Anglo-Saxon settlement).
How old is the English script?
The Latin alphabet was in use in central Italy by the 7th century BCE. Its family line runs Egyptian hieroglyphs → Proto-Sinaitic → Phoenician → Greek → Etruscan → Latin.
Sources
- Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
- Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — English language
- Omniglot — Latin alphabet
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Alphabet (writing)
- The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 7: Europe-I (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic)
- Omniglot — Classical Latin alphabet
- Omniglot — Carolingian minuscule
- Omniglot — Fraktur
- Omniglot — Phoenician alphabet
Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.
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