Quote Originally Posted by Bucko View Post
"but probably 1/3 of those are not native speakers of English, as English-speaking countries are predominantly immigration countries. So only about 30% of all Westerners are in fact native English speakers. The European Union alone has 20 official languages, and dozens more non-officials ones and dialects."
Care to state your source? I'm from one of those "immigration" countries and I'd say it was quite rare to meet someone whose mother-tongue wasn't English. For your information, I've taken the following from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogra...untry_of_Birth
76.9% Australian born, 23.1% foreign born.
The most commonly declared foreign countries of birth amongst respondents were:
United Kingdom : 1,036,253 (5.8%)
New Zealand : 355,765 (2.0%)
So all the Australian born people are naturally native English speakers. Plus all the New Zealand and UK people. That amounts to over 82%. So it might be fare to say that around 18% of all foreign-born Australians come from non-English speaking countries. Dare I say countries like America, New Zealand and Canada might be the same.
Australia and New Zealand have a combined population of 22 million, i.e. less than Belgium and the Netherlands combined (27 million). All Europe (including Russai) has a population of 710 million, of which only about 55 million are native English speakers (the UK+ Ireland 's population is 64 million, but let us not forget that many Irish, Welsh and Scots speak Gaelic or Scots as their mother tongue + the immigrants). According to Wikipedia and the US government stats, only 215 million out of the 300 million inhabitants of the USA are native English speakers. So even if 100% of Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders were native English speakers (which is far from true), the Western world would count about 320 native English speakers out of 1,060 million people, i.e. about 30% - and it is a generous estimation.