Overview
With more than 300 million native speakers and more than 1.5 billion official users, English constitutes the most widely used individual language of our time.
As one legacy of colonialism, the English language has developed different varieties throughout the last centuries. These varieties of English can be subdivided into those where English is used as a mother tongue and those where English is an official or semi-official second language.
The oldest English variety is British English. It is spoken in the British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) by almost 60 million native speakers.
American English is the variety of English spoken in the United States. With roughly 240 million speakers it constitutes the largest English speaking community in the world.