More Indians speak English than any other language, with the sole exception of Hindi. What's more, English speakers in India outnumber those in all of western Europe, not counting the United Kingdom. And Indian English-speakers are more than twice the UK's population.
English was the primary language for barely 2.3 lakh Indians at the time of the census, more than 86 million listed it as their second language and another 39 million as their third language. This puts the number of English speakers in India at the time to more than 125 million. The only language that had more speakers was Hindi with 551.4 million.
I posted my last entry in this series exactly a year ago; now it’s time to
survey my haphazard 2025 reading. I started off the year with Simenon’s
Maigret ...
2 comments:
Only 2.3 lakh EFL speakers? I knew the unmber would be tiny, but not *THAT* tiny.With numbers that low, my Anglo-Indian cousins should be given WWF endangered species status. :)
They're an endangered species alright, though the number would be higher if you counted those living out of India.
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