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FACTOID # 1: Houses in English-speaking countries have the most rooms.

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These are comments that our moderators found as non-authoritative though possibly interesting for further discussion on Language > English speakers

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Leslie 1st March 2005	The number of English speakers in India is grossly understated. OUCH! How can you use data which is more than four decades old for arriving at the English speaking population here. I suggest you check with the BBC on the same. Cheers!
Suchita Vemuri Staff Editor 5th March 2005	Hi Leslie -- you're right! The problem, however, lies partly with the census in India, which has changing formats and currently does not allow reporting for more than two languages! Since India has more than 300 spoken languages and most people would report one of these as the "mother tongue" (or the first language, even if it is not commonly spoken at home), and then report the national language, Hindi, as the second language, however comfortable they may be with English, it will not be reported in the census figures. In the 1981 census of India, 0.3% of the population said English was their first language. English daily newspapers in India have a irculation of more than 3 million, with an average 5 million readers to every copy, and all schools in urban centers and many in rural areas teach English.
Henock Assefa 22nd March 2005	It was my understanding that China had the largest number of English speakers followed by India. Where am I going wrong?
CJ Riley 23rd August 2005	Perhaps your editing team needs to reflect that numbers represented on the website are derived from census. In India's case, the data was collected in 1961. I can almost guarantee (since we do active business with India) that there more English speakers than the first two combined. - CJ, New York
Desteni 10th October 2005	I keep seeing the comments referring that China or India or the Phillippines had high ratings with the largest number or English-speaking citizens. Am I confused or would America not be on this list seeing that it is the national language and the most often spoken next to Spanish, spoken fluently by only 17.9% of the population?
kix 18th October 2005	Philippines should definitely be in the top 5, at least.
Vadiraja 6th November 2005	How come the table shows 0 for India, which is one among highest English speaking nations...
Sankar 14th November 2005	Please check the number of english speakers in India. I am positive that south India alone has more English speakers compared to UK, australia, new zealand etc.
Lindsay 17th November 2005	I was thrilled to find this site--until I saw the estimated number of english speakers in India as "0". ???
E Tan 1st December 2005	This data seems inaccurate/incomplete - e.g. there is no information on the number of English speakers in Malaysia, which one estimate has at about 10% of the population or about 2.5 million
BK 1st December 2005	I knew there was something wrong with this data! I was just about to use this for an assignment until I scrolled down and saw that there were no english speakers in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda... when I knowingly have friends and family from these areas. And when these countries were colonized, English (and French in some countries) was made to be the primary language... so there is really no explaination for these numbers. (??)
leslie filipino 8th December 2005	i dont believe that philippines wasnt among the top 5.the schools medium of instruction is english and for forty years philippines was colonized by the US .i am a witness that millions here know how to speak fluent english
analyst 18th January 2006	Also over-looked are the English-speaking African nations. Combined these exceed India and other nations. Singly they make up a substantial part of the top 10. My experience with India and others is they do have English speakers but even in the educated ranks these often are second language speakers, meaning trouble communicating.
Roberto Cervantes 11th April 2006	American citizens residing in Mexico. There are a million of American citizens living in Mexico, which is the country with the largest American community residing abroad. Mexico should be accounted for a million English speakers at least. There are many sources but this is one of them: http://www.aca.ch/amabroad.pdf
ROHIT RAWAT (BHAARAT(INDIA)) 3rd June 2006	INDIANS MUST THINK WHY THE MOST DEVELOPED NATIONS LIKE FRANCE,GERMANY,JAPAN,SPAIN etc. ARE NOT IN THE LIST OF ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES.EVEN CHINA IS NOT THERE.THIS IS THE REASON WHY INDIA IS A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY,AND IT WILL REMAIN UNTILL WE ARE ON THIS LIST.
Amit (Germay) 12th July 2006	India currently has more english speakers than the U.S and the U.K combined!!!
Ayeah Bruno (China) 10th September 2006	What about Cameroon? We are bilingual and English is our Language. Many too in China are bilingual. Complete your job and receive the praises you duely deserve.
Cesar Fabunan (Quezon City) 18th October 2006	I'm not sure the figures here are accurate at all. The Philippines has 32,802 english-speakers? Thats less than the population of the UP Diliman, and we all took english exams to get in. And the African nations who got zero, thats simply impossible for the reason that their Ambassadors alone here in the Philippines speak English.
Dan (Washington DC) 30th October 2006	There is no way in hell that number for Canada is accurate, even discounting people who speak English as a second language. Canada 17 million people is barely half of Canada's population. Canada's Quebecois, Inuit, and various Asian minorities are sizable but they are not _that_ big. Again, this is even discounting people who speak English as a second language (which seems to be how they are measuring English speakers in general on this chart, which is silly).
Mar (Philippines) 7th January 2007	You should do more studies because some of your statistics are wrong. You should not post your statistics if you are not sure of the data.
Rise Pray (United States) 3rd April 2007	32K plus out of 80million plus filipinos??!? For chrissake, go to the Philippines for you to know the truth.As far as I know,like some of the guys here is that my country, Philippines, is the THIRD LARGEST ENGLISH SPEAKING country.
Lex Uy (Philippines) 3rd April 2007	The problem with this statistic is that I don't think it takes into account that the Philippines has two First Languages which are Filipino and English. Apparently everything in the Philippines is in both Filipino and English...so most Filipinos should be fluent in both. One more thing, I'm currently studying in Singapore and most people do speak good English here and it is one of the country's main languages. There is however a large percentage of the population (the elderly) that only speaks the different native languages or dialects.
glen (us) 15th August 2007	Well, you can see the actual statistics here: http://alt-usage-english.org/distribution_english_speakers.shtml After USA and UK, it's Phillipines and India.
cham (Philippines) 2nd October 2007	So is there anyone here who can refer me to a reliable website that can tell the exact % or numbers?
Dhanya (Kenya) 17th July 2008	I am from Kenya and my brother and I both speak fluent English, although most people do not, zero is ridiculous
agido (Philippines) 12th September 2008	To the moderator: Ranking the Philippines below the top 3 of English-speaking countries in the world has made your post a lie. Ask those foreigners who came in to the Philippines and you will know.

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