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Countries With the Most English Speakers

In the world, there are 10 different countries that have at least 1 million NATIVE English speakers. Can you name them?
Speakers of English as a first language only
Includes speakers of Creole languages based on English
Percentages from Wikipedia
Total population as of 7 October 2025. More info here.
Quiz by
Seals
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Last updated: October 7, 2025
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First submittedSeptember 6, 2014
Times taken130,232
Average score80.0%
Rating4.86
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# Speakers
%
Country
267 m
78.1
United States
64.2 m
91.5
United Kingdom
23.2 m
9.7
Nigeria
21.9 m
54.4
Canada
19.5 m
72.0
Australia
5.67 m
8.73
South Africa
4.53 m
85.2
Ireland
3.98 m
75.5
New Zealand
2.84 m
48.3
Singapore
2.77 m
97.7
Jamaica
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46 Comments
Quizmaster
+23
Level ∞
Nov 21, 2022
History of this quiz. At first, it include ALL speakers either as a first or second language. This became unworkable due to different definitions of "English speaker" between countries.

So we de-featured the quiz due to lack of quality data.

Then people nominated it so we had to re-feature it. This time around, we included only native speakers because the data is much more accurate. It also has the nice coincidence of having exactly 10 countries and a sharp drop off below 1 million to number 11.

French2010
+8
Level 96
Nov 21, 2022
Spoiler alert -

I'm always surprised w/r to quizzes like this that a certain former British colony on the subcontinent doesn't have more native English speakers, given the sheer number of people. But indeed there is only about a quarter million. Compare that with the number of former French or Spanish colonies in which those languages are either dominant or at least an official language.

brandybuck96
+5
Level 82
Nov 21, 2022
A lot of the French colonies are likely in a similar situation where French is an/the official language, but rarely a native language.
Findlay
+22
Level 80
Nov 21, 2022
English is official in India, and lots of people speak it, just very few do so as a first language.
mightythor
+8
Level 68
Nov 21, 2022
It's weird though, at least in the movies, how speaking Hindi seems to mean mixing in about 25 % English.
Stoggler
+1
Level 55
Sep 25, 2025
To many English people of the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a real concern that English was too full of French words in a very similar way.
thread
+8
Level 67
Nov 29, 2022
It's the same with most Indian languages, and it's common in conversations also.
MyrmidonPantheon
+2
Level 56
May 15, 2025
And there are very few native speakers.
verdun
+7
Level 71
Nov 21, 2022
Philippines?
buck1017
+2
Level 78
Dec 1, 2022
I was surprised it wasn't on there as well.
ebagel
+4
Level 66
Dec 16, 2022
The list only includes people who speak English as their first language. Tens of millions of Filipinos can speak English sufficiently, but the vast majority of them speak it as a second language. Most people still grow up speaking Filipino and/or various regional languages like Cebuano.
Jango
+8
Level 63
Nov 21, 2022
English is a first language for many people in India, a country of well over a billion people. If Wikipedia are not including India, then they need to do their research better
brandybuck96
+7
Level 82
Nov 22, 2022
Depends how you're defining 'first language' or 'mother tongue' I guess
Relox84
+7
Level 69
Nov 22, 2022
The 2011 cencus of India gives 260'000 speakers of English as a first language. Nearly all of its over 100 million speakers speak it as a second or third language.
JCplayer
+1
Level 33
Dec 16, 2022
But English is not a official language in India
Beatlesid
+9
Level 55
Dec 16, 2022
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India
Stoggler
+3
Level 55
Sep 25, 2025
Oh dear!
Fresco3
+9
Level 70
Nov 22, 2022
No Ghana? Surprising.
Dra1
+1
Level 55
Dec 6, 2025
Ghana, Philipines, that's really surprising to not see them here
QatariFerrari
+4
Level 87
Nov 23, 2022
I'm surprised there are that many people in Singapore that speak English as a first language. I would have thought Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil are more common as first languages, and English mostly as a second language
81928128
+20
Level 63
Nov 23, 2022
Singaporean here! English as a first language is becoming increasingly common, especially among the younger generations (I'd guess that more than half of Millennials/Gen Zs have English as their first language), which is probably because 1) all subjects in school are taught in English 2) bilingual parents tend to choose to raise their children with English as it's more useful, and the parents themselves are using English more often when interacting with other people.

(Technically, I'd say most Singaporeans speak Singlish and not English as their first language, but apparently this wasn't an option in the census cited in Wikipedia, probably because the Singapore government considers Singlish as a wrong version of English rather than a language in its own right. In any case, it wouldn't matter because Singlish is an English-based creole, which is also fine because of the caveat.)

Etanna
+3
Level 73
Nov 24, 2022
I was shocked to see neither India nor Indonesia on the list :O
Quizbyquiz
+3
Level 43
Dec 17, 2022
I'm surprised India isn't on here. I know that they mostly speak Hindi but even if 0.5% of the population spoke English as a first language you would have around 5 million speakers. Why isn't India on here?
FlyingG
+5
Level 68
Jun 6, 2023
Why would Indonesia be on here?
mf3
+4
Level 90
Nov 30, 2022
I'd challenge Nigeria having that many English-as-first-language speakers.
TheLonelyAlula
+1
Level 57
Dec 16, 2022
Yeah, it's because Nigerian Pidgin is considered English according to this quiz. I disagree, but I think it's a pretty standard rule on this site.
zacha123
+3
Level 58
Dec 16, 2022
What abut Trinidad? They have a million people who mostly speak English.
Hockputer
+2
Level 56
Dec 20, 2022
They have a small population.
JamesWycombe
+2
Level 74
Apr 12, 2025
The 10th country on the list has 2.7m, so 1.2m in Trinidad doesn't make the cut.
kalbahamut
+5
Level 79
Dec 16, 2022
Despite the claim that this data is more accurate, I'm skeptical. There are more people in India and the Philippines who grow up speaking English than there are in Nigeria. And they're not speaking some janky creole or pidgin language, either. I guess it's still considered a 2nd language even if they start learning it basically at birth, if at the same time they speak Marathi or Cebuano at home more often. But the quiz says "native speaker".... and... there are also many multiple definitions out there of what constitutes a "native speaker" of English. As someone who taught English to speakers of other languages I can attest to this. The source QM links to doesn't say "native speaker"... it says "as first language"... that's different.
tshalla
+20
Level 78
Dec 16, 2022
"Janky creole or pidgin"? I feel like I'm in 1930s India or Jamaica, being reprimanded by a missionary or colonial official.
kalbahamut
+7
Level 79
Dec 16, 2022
I'm sure that joke kills at the parties you imagine yourself going to.
tshalla
+17
Level 78
Dec 16, 2022
It hadn't occurred to me that a colonial worldview was funny.
kalbahamut
+5
Level 79
Dec 19, 2022
oh I'm sorry. You were legitimately trying to pull at our heart strings or inspire outrage? Okay, I amend my response: I'm sure that vivid picture of your fantasies of colonial oppression would elicit a round of enthusiastic finger snapping at the parties you imagine yourself going to.
tshalla
+16
Level 78
Dec 21, 2022
"fantasies of colonial oppression"?
TheLonelyAlula
+2
Level 57
Sep 3, 2024
Weirdness of this comment aside... I'm surprised too that the Philippines and India don't make this list, but a good amount of data is available for those countries and apparently they don't. But anyways, even if Nigerian Pidgin wasn't counted, Nigeria would still make this list. Many Nigerians speak (standard) English as a first language and some are even monolingual English speakers.
RJF
+1
Level 67
Dec 16, 2022
I was going to say that figure for South Africa seems a bit sus, but adding up 1/3 of South Africa's white population (with the other 2/3 speaking Afrikaans natively) and the entire Indian population (who overwhelmingly speak English at home), it comes surprisingly close.
KennethTAA
+1
Level 61
Jan 16, 2024
figured India would be number 2, but I guess the source doesn't count it.
TheLonelyAlula
+1
Level 57
Sep 3, 2024
I would like to petition for Creoles to not count for this list since they are different languages after all. Nigeria and Singapore would still make the list, but Jamaica would be taken off. Also, if Creoles are being counted here, then Trinidad and Tobago, Cameroon, and Ghana should be on here according to Wikipedia/Ethnologue. Also, according to the Wikipedia page sourced in this quiz, Egypt and Sudan should also be on here but I really doubt they have over 1 million native English speakers. Also, Kenya should be on here, look up "Primary languages spoken at home in Kenya 2021" and you can see 3.8% of Kenyans or roughly 2 million people speak English at home.
idontkn1
+2
Level 94
Nov 6, 2025
Everyone country listed is over 2.5 million so Kenya at 2 million would still be off the list. I've met/dealt with tons of Jamaicans in my life and even in their so called creole they are a hell of a lot easier to understand than 95% of the Scots I've dealt with. It might be that they are learning a pidgin at home but between schooling and immersion of proper "English" they easily transition and that is kinda the point of classifying a language, is it mutually intelligible between users and by that definition it is.
Jeremy2011
+1
Level 46
Nov 6, 2025
Surprised that south Africa and especially Nigeria came
Ampersandwich
+1
Level 61
Nov 7, 2025
Long history of English colonization for both, as well as numbers (especially with Nigeria)!

South Africa is still one of the "whitest" African countries & most native English speakers are white.

I think we collectively see Africa as a blind spot, which is a shame, since it's such a cool continent

DubawntLake
+1
Level 61
Nov 6, 2025
No PNG? Tok Pisin should count here as a creole, no?
BMull28
+1
Level 55
Feb 16, 2026
Native L1 speakers estimated at 100-200k
Haddies
+1
Level 35
Nov 10, 2025
There's 5.5mio people in New Zealand. Not sure where the # here is arrived at ?
BMull28
+1
Level 55
Feb 16, 2026
75% of which is ~4M which is the figure stated in the table. Not a massive level of uncertainty
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