ABSTRACT
He goes on to point out that whether or not pidgin and creole languages are included, the total number of L2 speakers in these regions is well above the total number of L1 speakers. And in fact, although all three totals (population, L1, L2) have increased since the rst edition of Crystal’s English as a Global Language (1997), the most substantial increase by far is in the number of L2 speakers, which has almost doubled from 235,351,300 in 1997 to over 430 million in 2003. And we should bear in mind that Crystal’s gures are likely to have increased still further in the decade or so since the publication of his second edition in 2003.
